


Episode 907: Sanguis Sanctus, Part I

by agelade



Series: Lustra: A Supernatural Season 9 AU [7]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brothers Lie, Bunker Bros, Case Fic, Demon Blood, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-22
Updated: 2014-10-30
Packaged: 2017-12-12 16:32:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/813654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agelade/pseuds/agelade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something's killing people in Smalltown, America, so what else is new? Sam's dealing, Dean's dealing, and both are keeping their secrets, but when Sam takes off before the hunt's even done, some secrets will find their way into the light of day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for the SPN Gen Big Bang event on LJ. Art by [amber1960](http://amber1960.livejournal.com/). Beta'd by Caladria.

 

Dean surveyed the field. Summer breeze blew across the half grown green stalks. Another dead end. Another day gone. Another cold trail. He closed his eyes and spoke into the phone. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm here. Just get on it, okay? We gotta find him." He hung up, stuck his phone into his pocket. Cas was at his elbow, frowning.

"Dean-"

"I know, Cas. Let's just check out the next sighting." Dean lingered though, just another moment, staring at the burnt out circle in the field, the ragged edges where demon embers had glowed and gone out. Dammit, Sam.

* * *

Sam focused through the haze, the sour-tang, felt it unfurl inside him, touch that knot of power inside him. He pressed it outward, seeking, lingering, until he found it, the black sulfur smoke of a demon, and he closed his eyes. Felt the smoke shudder and resist, felt the person inside the meatsuit come awake and her confusion helped him, pressed the demon to the edges where Sam grabbed it and pulled it to the ground, made it submit to him, and then it was gone. Sam smiled, blood teeth.

 

**Episode Seven**   
**"Sanguis Sanctus"**   
**Chapter One**

_**Ten Days Earlier** _

"Emily Hopkins," Sam read from the laptop screen in the war room of the bunker. "Seventeen years old, straight A student. Found... missing her heart, liver, and lungs..." He skimmed the rest of the article.

Dean watched him, how he seemed alert. No signs of hearing voices. The doc was due in a week for Sam's first actual monthly appointment to put Jack back in the box, but Sam seemed like he was doing pretty well. Still. No sense pushing it.

"Aw come on, man," he said, setting an opened beer down next to Sam at the conference table. "It's only been like a week since that whole back to nature crapfest." Dean nodded at Sam's re-slung shoulder in evidence. "You sure you're okay?"

"Yeah. I'm good. Listen, Dean." Him and the stupid eyebrows again. "This is gonna take time to heal up. Cas' angel friend did as much as she could with her injured grace, but-"

"So we wait. Until you're healed up."

"While another innocent victim gets killed? No, Dean. You gotta stop getting all mama bear when something happens. It's gonna keep happening. This is the job, you know? I just wanna work. Can we just work?"

Dean frowned.

"Unless _you_ don't wanna work. How's your leg?"

"Oh I'm fine," Dean said. In fact, his leg itched like crazy where it was healing up, but the goatman's herbal remedy had kept it clean and Sam's stitching had done the rest of the job.

"So then we work."

Dean rolled his eyes, kicked back in a chair of his own, pulled on his beer. "Fine. Whatever. So Emily Hopkins."

"Yeah. Right. Sorry, I'm just-"

Dean waited for him to continue. Sam blinked at his screen like he could have used another week of sleep. "Listen, maybe you're just not seeing straight quite yet. This last job kinda knocked you on your ass. Literally."

" _You're_ the one who got adopted by a monster in the woods."

Dean watched Sam scroll. Faint smile there, but it didn't reach his eyes - he'd always known the kid's little ticks, but the intensity with which Dean was starting to catalog Sam's every facial expression would definitely have once made him uncomfortable. Still, Sam had tried to kill himself in a church, in a motel room in Boston, and just now, avoiding no-bro-homo moments wasn't the top of Dean's list. He'd watch every little twitch if it could provide some insight into his brother's head. And all he could think was that he didn't know what worried him more about how their last case went down: the way Sam froze like he wasn't sure what was real, or the way he gave Dean the useful supplies and basically set himself up for failure out in a forest in Wisconsin little more than a week before.

"So, this case," Dean prompted.

"Yeah, here's the thing. The local PD is baffled. No suspects, no motive. Nothing."

"There's never _nothing_ ," Dean said. "And why don't we think this is a run of the mill serial killer?"

Sam scoffed. "'Run of the mill serial killer.' Wow, our lives are messed up."

"Well?"

"Because," Sam said, "there were 'strange symbols carved into her flesh.' Pretty sure it's our kinda thing."

"Could still just be a serial killer."

"There's been a rash of killings in the area in the past two months-"

"All missing heart, liver, and lungs? Like, say, a _serial killer_?"

"There's an early report of a similar murder but with different organs removed."

"So it's a copy-cat."

Sam shook his head. "Maybe. I know it's flimsy, but it's the only thing on the wire. And it's _weird_. We should check it out just in case."

Dean smiled, or attempted to anyway. Another hunt, and Sam wouldn't be swayed. Dean had been trying to get him to slow down, and it just made the kid feel worse when, as they always did, things went to shit, because it would always be that Sam had pushed them into a hunt Dean was trying to hold them back from. So, okay. Whatever huge clusterfuck this one ended up being? Dean'd take the hit on it. He tried to look eager. "Well you had me at 'strange symbols.' Looks like we're hitting the road." He frowned then. "Where we goin' again?"

"Uh... Lincoln, Pennsylvania." Sam looked up from the laptop. "About twenty hours drive, middle of nowhere."

Dean sucked on his teeth. "Great. Just great. Pack your banjo, Sammy."

Sam made a face. "That's the - not - nevermind."

* * *

The motel room was done up mostly tastefully in dark reds and browns, a nice watercolor over each queen bed, dust-free drapes that promised to block out all light. Dean sat on his bed and immediately checked for cable television.

"Sammy look, cartoons."

Sam didn't bite. He smiled briefly and plopped down at the little table, opened up his laptop. This place had wifi for a mere $20 a night, but it was the only motel in town, so whatever. At least Sam would be happy. He pulled out his tablet and starting scrolling through the info they had, making notes along the way.

"So, Emily Hopkins was... a student at Lincoln East High School. She was a cheerleader-"

"Oooh!" Dean said.

"Competitively," Sam finished.

Dean looked to heaven. "Oh, I bet."

"Dean. Gross. Can you get serious?"

"Nope."

Sam sat back from his laptop and stared at it, lips pressed into a judgey little line.

"Oh come on," Dean said, conciliatory. "Fine, tell me about this girl, the organ donor."

" _Emily_ ," Sam corrected, then sighed and relaxed forward again to consult the article. "Was a - cheerleader, right. Active in drama, volleyball, and... had an afterschool job."

"Any relation to the other vics?"

"Not as far as I can tell from what little there is here. I'm guessing the cops have more. Time to suit up?"

"You know it," Dean said.

Twenty minutes later, hair properly in place, suits de-wrinkled, IDs re-edged where the laminate had started to come unstuck, Sam and Dean kicked back in the impala, heading out to the police station with grand intentions of impersonating FBI agents and getting elbow deep in at least one cadaver.

"Listen Sammy, you might be right," Dean said, tapping on the steering wheel along with the music. He glanced over at Sam, frowning at his tablet.

"About what?"

"About workin'. Be nice to actually have a straight up monster to kill, right? Instead of some witch or-"

"Yeah. I guess."

Dean frowned. Probably shouldn't have brought up the witch who'd sucked out some of Sam's brains. Course Sam was probably more bent out of shape because he'd had to kill her, some woman who was grieving her family. And there was the ghost they had decidedly _not_ ganked because he could help them decode an ancient "How Not to Apocalypse" handbook. And thank God Sam didn't know about the goatman's fate, or he'd probably never speak to Dean again. And Dean'd deserve it. Yeah, they could really use a straight up monster.

But Sam had wanted to do this. He'd seemed okay. And he didn't even know half of what he should have been pissed about. He gestured at Sam helplessly.

"Come on, Sam. This was your idea. What's with this sourpuss act?"

Sam looked up at Dean. "What sourpuss act?"

"This, this mopey..." He mimicked what he thought looked like Sam, moping - hunched shoulders, gopher teeth.

Sam made a face. "I don't do that." He looked out the window. "And I'm not being a sourpuss. I just..."

"Just what?"

"I'm waiting... for the other shoe to drop."

Dean stared at the road. And there it was. But they were pretty much always waiting for the other shoe to drop, all the time, so it was kind of a toss-up what Sam was referring to, specifically. Dean's instinct was to change the subject, but um.

"What other shoe?" he said. The whole "talking it out" thing had been doing them pretty good.

Sam looked at him, brows up, the picture of surprised-puppy. "Uh, nothing, nevermind." He turned back to the window.

"We're not going down this road again, Sammy," Dean said then, voice low.

Sam blew out a breath on a little laugh. "I'm not hiding anything from you Dean, except stuff I don't want to talk about. Okay? I'm allowed to just not want to talk about stuff."

"Yeah, you're allowed," Dean said, shaking his head. "And normally I'd be the one driving that train, you know that, but lately-" Dean blew out a breath and watched the road. Why was it _always_ a fight with this kid. He tapped the steering wheel. "Listen, forget I said it like that. I didn't mean - I'm just saying - I'm saying-"

"What, Dean. What are you saying?"

Dean gritted his teeth. He was leaving the possible demon blood thing alone, remember? He was letting Sam keep his secrets, but that didn't mean he couldn't just be encouraging, like, let Sam feel like he could tell him whatever. Tell him about the weather, whatever, just as long as he didn't try to off himself in a motel room in Boston again, and hey, if he brought up the demon blood thing himself? Bonus. "I'm saying, you can talk to me. You know, about whatever. Nothing has to be wrong, you know like - _our_ kind of wrong. You can just... talk to me."

"Yeah, right." Sam laughed. "Dean Winchester, sensitive listener."

"Yuck it up, moonbright," Dean growled. "We're here, let's just get this done."

* * *

The police station was small, but it buzzed with activity. They flashed their badges with fake names on their lips, but were ushered into an office to wait before even breathing the word "Agent." Dean blinked at Sam. Sam shrugged, hands spread in complete wtf-mode. He tried to flag down a passing officer. She ignored him. He gave up and sidled over to Dean to watch the passers-by and said, "What do you make of _this_?"

"Busy little bees, aren't they? Who knew a town this small could have so many cops?" They watched for another moment, then Dean went out to try his luck. He stepped right into an officer's path, so she couldn't just ignore him, and held up his badge, caught her eye, smiled that slightly threatening fuck you smile, and she reluctantly turned toward him and Sam and stepped into the office.

"Can I help you?"

"Busy today," Dean said.

"Agents Carter and Bernson," Sam said, flashing his badge briefly. "We're here about a seventeen year old vic, missing some-" He gestured at his own torso, and Dean supplied:

"Innards." He grinned.

"Emily Hopkins," Sam continued, sparing Dean a warning look. Dean made a face back.

The officer looked them both up and down, then shook her head and said, "Follow me."

The morgue wasn't buzzing like the rest of the station, but only because one man does not a buzzing population make. The place was scrubbed clean, dazzling and prim. The coroner was brisk. "She's already autopsied. My report, and if you have any questions-"

Sam and Dean shared a look. "Actually," Dean said. "We do."

"-You can make an appointment," the coroner finished, then frowned.

"Just a couple of quick ones," Sam put in hastily, bodily stepping in front of the man to block his exit. "What can you tell us about the organs that were left in the body? Anything... unusual about them?"

The coroner rolled his eyes. "No. Nothing unusual."

Sam looked up. "And the missing organs - the heart, lungs, liver - they weren't recovered? Even partially?"

"Nope. Now if you'll excuse me."

"Just one more question," Dean said. "What can you tell us about the other five victims in the past seven weeks?"

"Other victims?" the coroner asked.

"Yeah," Sam said, stepping away to look at things mounted on the walls, conveniently giving Dean the freedom to stare the guy down. The guy frowned at Dean, watched Sam as he strolled around the lab, _touching things_. He scowled, made an aborted attempt to move toward Sam, get him to stop, which Dean stepped in front of. Dean grinned as Sam rattled off the names. "Adam Lawson. Gabrielle Sanders. Chris Faulk-"

The coroner cut him off. "Do you think they're related?"

"Maybe," Sam said. He spun from his stroll to smile at the man, brows up, picture of innocence. "Missing organs-"

"All different ones, though."

"Strange symbols carved into their flesh-"

"Again, all different symbols. Our guy says there's no way they were killed by the same person. He says best guess, whoever killed the first kid, Adam Lawson, is done or moved on, and Sanders, Faulk, Avery, and the rest - they're copycats, different copycats who don't know enough of the facts of the case to do it the way the first guy did. We've been keeping the details out of the press. Obviously. The copycats don't know what symbols to use or what organs to take."

"That's not exactly true, is it?" Sam said, voice light. "Adam Lawson wasn't the first victim. That was Bernard Hale. The article on _him_ does list the organs. And now two months later, the report on Emily Hopkins lists hers, not an organ in common."

"That Bernard Hale incident was dealt with internally. A hole that's been plugged. Anyway, it's an IA matter. Look, I don't know. I'm not the expert, but our guy-"

"-says copycats. Got it. Well, we'd just like to explore every possibility," Dean said.

"You know how it is," Sam agreed, still with that smile.

"Yeah. Yeah, I know how it is," the coroner said. He skirted around Dean, and went to his file drawers. "Why don't I just make you some copies of their files as well, then."

"Yeah, why don't you do that," Sam said, nodding. He tilted his head and raised his brows, and Dean had to keep himself from shaking his head in disbelief that Sam could pull that innocent puppy thing out without missing a beat, after everything they had done and been through. _Good show, kid._ "We'll be right here."

The coroner left maybe a little too quickly. Dean watched him go, then shook his head. "Good doin, Sammy. I think he about pissed himself. 'We'll be right here.' Lookit you. All smooth and cool."

"I am pretty awesome," Sam said, still with that playful, calm smile.

He frowned at it. "How can you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Man, it's creepy. Stop it."

Sam grinned wider. "Stop what?"

"Smiling, like you mean it."

Sam shrugged. "I do mean it."

"Yeah, because you're just made of sunshine."

"Yeah, I kinda am."

It was light, an airy kind of joke. Sam smiled again, and Dean watched him, looking close. Little things, again, because it was odd and troubling. And it had to be faked, had to be, because just twenty minutes before, in the car, he was so bothered, and Sam wasn't Sam if he wasn't in agony over _something_.

Dean shook his head and stepped into Sam's space. "Yeah. Right. This? This is a conversation."

Sam shrugged, closed his eyes and the smile faded into a resigned line. He exhaled and his whole body drooped. He was putting in so much effort, _Dean_ felt exhausted by it. Sam looked off. "No it isn't."

"Yes, it is-" But the coroner came back just then with six photocopied files for them, and Dean barely thanked him in his haste to get Sam out of there and into the car.

They sat in the parking lot of some no-name fast food joint, Dean with his burger and coke and fries and Sam _maybe_ half-way through a cardboard-bar. If he hadn't seemed so kind of... _cheerful_ , Dean might have suggested they get out and sit; Sam could rarely sit in the same room with cooked meat of any kind these days, let alone shut up in a car. But there he sat, afternoon light outlining his face like nothing had happened, like he wasn't on painkillers or had his arm in a sling, wasn't downing some mystery substance to just keep himself on his feet-

"Case, Dean," Sam said without looking up from the file he was studying.

"What?"

"Stop spacing out. We got a case."

"I'm not spacing out," Dean said, petulant. " _You're_... spacing out."

"Nice comeback," he pitched back, that dumb smile at the corners of his mouth again.

"Shut it." Dean looked out of the driver's side window to give himself anywhere else to look other than the strangely serene dude sitting in the passenger seat, silently shuffling through crime scene photos graphic enough to give a horror movie make-up artist the shakes. Every few moments, between bites of bland protein bar, Sam made notes in the tablet Charlie had given him with a stylus, occasionally flipping through a virtual photolog of monster types.

Sam cleared his throat. "What."

"What, what."

Sam sighed, a whole body sigh, and he turned to Dean, all stupid eyebrows and dumb mouth. "You keep looking at me." He gestured at Dean's lap. "And you still have half a cheeseburger."

"I'm not looking at you."

"Dean." Sam blew out a breath again and stared at the dash in front of him. "I'm fine. Everything's fine. I'm... here. Okay? I'm working, I'm dealing. I'm fine. Are you fine?"

"Oh I'm _fine_!"

"Good."

"I know it's good."

"Well, that's... great." Sam watched him another moment, then shook his head and turned back to the file folder in his lap.

"I know it's great," Dean muttered, bringing his soda to his mouth and hunting for the straw as he tried to look casually out the window.

Back at the motel, Dean tested the cable for porn while Sam poured over the photos, mumbling over the information each file presented. He bounced ideas off Dean for hours, but no one monster fit the pattern, no one cult fit the dozens of symbols spread across six bodies. No one theory accounted for everything. Sam apparently hadn't noticed Dean shift to one syllable grunt responses, and Dean took the opportunity to watch for signs of something dark in his brother, waiting to jump out of the other shoe when it hit the ground. Something to account for his recently suicidal brother's shift into more or less easy cheerfulness.

But all he saw was Sam, Sammy, hunting down stupid dead-end trail after stupid dead-end trail, matching up symbols to his screen, pen in his mouth, notebook propped up and held open at a page by another file folder.

Just... Sammy.

It was eight o'clock in the evening when Sam said, that peculiar tone of discovery in his voice: "Hang on. Okay, so there's no connection between these victims at all."

Dean frowned and nodded. "Not exactly a breakthrough, Sam." He got up from his bed where he'd been flipping through the fuzzy cable between eyeballing "sunshine" boy, and came over, stopping on the way to pull a fresh beer from the cooler for Sam.

"There's no connection between them," Sam continued rolling his eyes, "until they're dead. Then-" He flipped through the files just to confirm. "Every one of their cases is handled by the same detective."

Dean smiled with half his mouth. After a moment of Sam looking at him with his brows up, like _don't you get it_ , Dean said, "Okay. I'm trying here, Sam, but-"

"The same investigator is on all six cases the coroner was convinced weren't related. He's the one calling them copycat murders, he's the one preventing the real FBI from getting involved."

Dean nodded along. "They'd come in if it were actually a serial killer case." Dean laughed. "Imagine his face when the coroner tells him we showed up anyway!"

Sam was frowning. "Yeah..."

"So, this..." Dean stood behind Sam to peer over Sam's shoulder at the name. "Detective Warner doesn't want the Feds involved. Do we think he's actually doing the killing? Or just instructing whoever _is_ to put in the wrong details, so he can say copycat. Great. A smart one. I guess that means the symbols we've been researching are useless too."

"Not necessarily." Sam scrolled through the notes on his tablet screen. "I mean, why carve symbols at all if they didn't mean _something_."

Dean watched Sam nod at his tablet thoughtfully. "So I guess we talk to this Detective Warner, huh?"

Sam nodded, distracted. Then he lifted his head. "What? No, one of us has to research the symbols."

Dean grinned. "I'll be back by midnight, library boy."

"Dean, I can't. I've been staring at them for hours. Let me go out, talk to this guy. You can overwork _your_ brain for once."

"No can do, buddy-"

"Stop it, Dean. You've been itchy since we started this case. The sighing and watching out of the corner of your eye and asking me stupid questions about _smiling_? I know it's me. I know you think something is up with me, but you gotta let it go. I get that you're worried about whatever, but I'm tired of it. I can do this, but not with you hovering. I'm just..." He looked up at Dean with the puppy face. "I'm tired, man."

Dean shook his head, trying to come up with something to stem the flow of utter horseshit - uh, true, almost _psychically_ _accurate_ horseshit, but still - coming from his brother's general mouth vicinity, but Sam was already standing up and putting his tablet and notebook into his bag.

Dean found his voice at the sight of Sam actually prepping to go out. "You get that I'm worried? Really? What clued you in? Was it your arm in a sling? Or maybe it's how every other day you're coughing up blood. I mean come on, Sam-" Dean advanced. "You were the one saying he was waiting for the other shoe to drop, you know? Maybe I just trust your gut and your gut is telling you-"

"It's not my gut, Dean." Sam pulled off the sling and threw it on the bed, flexed his arm. Rolled his shoulders and didn't so much as wince. He snagged the keys to the impala from the table by the door. "It's you."

Dean's stomach flipped, but there was nothing accusatory in Sam's tone or face, just disappointment. Not quite reassuring, but not damning either. When Dean didn't respond, Sam went on.

"I saved _you_ , in the woods. What more do I have to do, Dean? To prove to you that I can do this. I can do an interview."

"Sam, that's not-" Dean stopped, tried again. "I'm just-" He closed his mouth.

Sam sighed with his whole body and looked like he might change his mind or apologize or at least suggest Dean come with him. But instead, he tilted his head toward the glowing laptop screen and said, "I should be back in an hour or so. I hope you have better luck than I did." He turned to the door, and without looking back, said, "We can't live like this, Dean. It's not sustainable. You gotta just trust me that everything's fine. We have to live like everything's fine. Until it's not." He looked up at Dean. "Okay?"

Dean nodded. "Okay."

* * *

He should have told Dean to come with him. He should have suggested they table it til morning, really. There was no guarantee Detective Warner would even be at the station at - Sam checked his watch. Eight-thirty in the evening. Stupid.

Sam tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel, stopped at a red light. He just needed to get out from under Dean's attention. He just needed some quiet. He shouldn't even have been driving. His shoulder, the seizures of just a few weeks before. But he couldn't bring himself to get worried.

The town was small: one motel, a handful of traffic lights along one main drag, surrounded by farmland. If he went off the road, he'd end up in a shallow ditch down a gentle slope, the easiest car accident ever, and he'd call Dean. Tiny town, Dean could just walk to him probably. Sam was managing, dammit.

Still. The odds of catching Warner were slim, and Dean's stupid sadface when he left, and weren't things generally good with them lately? Maybe explaining to Dean what was going on, explain to Dean that he was dealing, that he was doing what he could, what he had to do to be a reliable hunting partner - what happened in the woods in Wisconsin that almost got Dean killed could never happen again, and Dean would understand that Sam needed to manage however he could. Right? Maybe just talking to Dean would do more good than aimlessly following leads that couldn't, probably, be followed until morning anyway.

Fine. He'd turn around. He'd go back. He always went back.

The light changed and Sam pressed the gas.

And almost hit a woman in red.

He stood up on the brake pedal. She was illuminated in his headlights, hands up and out to stop him, and when he did stop inches from her knees, she put her hands on the hood of the impala and looked off to the right like someone was chasing her.

Sam slammed the car into park and tumbled out toward her, his own hands up in a show of safety, of non-violence.

"Hey, hey, it's okay," he soothed. She reached a hand out to him; she was crying and her lip was split. She clung onto his coat. He patted her back and pulled her away from the front of the car, toward the driver's side because she kept looking to the right, and he set her there leaning against the door and he kept a hand outstretched to her while he stepped back toward the front, to stave off whatever monster had been chasing her.

"It's - it's my boyfriend," she sobbed.

Not a monster, then. Just a _monster._ Sam peered into the darkness. "Get in the car," he said, just before a shape barreled out of the shadow into him. They both went down. Sam strained to look up and check on the woman; she was frozen by fear. "Get in the car!" For his lack of attention, he took a meaty hook that shook his jaw. A bloom of something on his jawline. The close-up view of this man's hand shaking out the sting of having punched someone full force, the silver of rings flashing in the distant streetlight.

_Serves you right._ Shut up, Satan.

Sam recovered quickly, grabbed at the man's arm as he was levering himself up away from Sam, toward the woman. He obviously thought he'd taken Sam out of the fight, but he didn't know Sam, and Sam latched onto his retreating arm and climbed up it, dragging the man back downward and gathering momentum and over they went again, but Sam had the advantage of surprise and of height and he shovelled that momentum into his fist and clocked the guy upside the head.

The man lay still.

Sam sat on his legs and heaved breaths, one hand over his aching shoulder, but he watched for movement, because he wasn't going to make the same mistake this guy made. After a moment, he got himself together and stood. She was still standing at the car door, staring, shaking, holding her arms around her middle.

Sam went to her, put a hand to her shoulder. "It's okay now. What's your name?"

"Natalie, I'm Natalie."

"Okay, Natalie. I'm Sam. I'm gonna you to the hospital-"

"I'm fine. I just." She stared at the man on the ground, and she frowned, and Sam turned back.

The man stirred, but he didn't attack. He got himself together, snarled something unintelligible to the woman, then glared at Sam. He cradled his hand and ran off down the street. Sam let out a breath he hadn't been intentionally holding.

"Okay, hospital."

"No." She smoothed her dress and dabbed at her mouth. The bleeding had stopped, but her bottom lip was fat and red. She looked up at Sam with steel. "I'd like to go to the police station and make a report."

Sam furrowed his brow. "Are you sure?"

She nodded, then she brushed past him to circle around to the passenger side door, all dignity.

* * *

"I'm sorry," she said once they were en route. The black road beneath them gave way from the smooth blacktop of the highway that led out of town to the pebbly surface road of a small town, it sped toward them in the headlights, disappeared under them. "I must have seemed like a hysterical woman."

"No," Sam soothed. "You were attacked, and frightened. But you did the right thing. Looked for help, saw a car and - it worked out."

She seemed to accept that answer, and he detected in her what he sometimes thought he saw in Dean - _nothing is alright, but if it's possible to behave as though everything's fine, trust me to find a way._

"That guy's your boyfriend, huh?"

She spared him a look. "Was, I guess."

"What set him off?"

She shrugged, fatigue in the gesture, a sign that said _this is a repeat performance_. "Who knows. His favorite spoon wasn't clean?" She gave him a half-smile. "I don't really want to-"

"No, no of course," Sam said. "I shouldn't have asked. You don't have to talk about it."

She took a deep, settling breath, patting her lap. Sam saw that her hands were shaking. She was holding it together pretty well, but she was on the edge. It struck him how normal people suffered terrible things, complicated, human things, while he and Dean struggled with what were really black and white issues. Demons are bad, kill them. Monsters are bad, kill them. Occasionally Madison's face would swim before him as he took the kill shot, or Amy's teeth would tear at him in a dream, but they were exceptions.

Meanwhile, a woman lives in a house with a man who could snap and kill her at any moment, but there's love and history there, there's sweetness and shared pain there, and one of them is a monster, and the other shouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger and leave, but they're both just human, they're both just trying to survive. Because she should run, but she knows his past, and she can't leave him when deep down he's just a scared little boy trying to resist but ultimately failing to deny abuses he himself suffered, grasping for any kind of control over his life, and when things don't go according to his plan-

_It does sound familiar, doesn't it? Don't you live with an alcoholic that would rather see you die than become something he doesn't like?_

Sam blew out a breath, blinked. He resisted looking in the rearview mirror; he knew what was in the backseat. _That's the best you got?_

_Which one of you is the monster? Which one of you is grasping for control?_

"Everything's going to be okay," he murmured, to himself or to her.

The woman looked at him seriously then, and from the corner of his eye he saw her expression change into concern. She reached toward his face, where the boyfriend had caught him with the silver ring. It was bleeding freely down his jawline. And he cursed when he tested the extent of the mess - here he was about to bloody up his dress shirt.

"Just great," he said.

"I'm so sorry. Here, let me-" She pulled a napkin out of her purse and dabbed at his throat. She slicked up toward his jaw, toward the cut, smearing red into his skin but saving his shirt, and he caught her hand with the napkin in it and he placed it back into her lap.

"Thanks."

She looked taken aback, a little disappointed. Maybe his gentle voice had betrayed her; she thought he was going to let her mother him, care for him in exchange for him rescuing her, but he had had enough of getting close to people, and the delicate way he treated her was a lie if what it said was _let's care for each other, as strangers who meet in blood and grief might, briefly but sincerely._

That wasn't an option anymore.

She turned to face front, subdued. "Will you come in with me?"

Sam nodded as he pulled into the station parking lot. "Of course. They'll want my statement anyway." And here he was at the station after all, after intending to turn around and go back.

_Free will is a lie, Sammy._

Sam closed his eyes and did not reach for the scar on his hand.

* * *

_**NOW** _

Sam rested his head back as the girl, Constance, washed his hands with care. The water was scented with something, something floral, green and growing, marigolds on the side of the road, field flowers. She cared for him, he thought, she hummed as she brushed the scented water over each finger, and because she thought he was asleep, she brought his palms to her lips and kissed them, each one, reverent.

Perhaps she could be allowed to live, he thought.


	2. Chapter 2

**Episode Seven**  
" **Sanguis Sanctus"  
Chapter Two**

_**Ten Days Earlier** _

"Where the hell have you been?" Dean bellowed, shoving past the late shift officers drifting back and forth between their desks and the breakroom. This kid was gonna get it.

Sam rolled his eyes and gestured around them at the police station, not as busy as their daytime visit, but still populated. "Dean, it's been a long night-"

Dean frowned at Sam's face. "What the hell is that?"

Sam put his hand to the bandage at his jawline and frowned. "I got in a fight."

"Okay. Come on." Dean pulled Sam up by his good arm; Sam didn't protest. He seemed tired, he was probably hurting. Dean felt maybe a little bad about manhandling him, but dammit. He didn't care what Sam said. He couldn't just accept that shit was going to happen to them, to _Sam_. Not anymore. Not when he'd come so close to losing Sam so many times already. He stood Sam up and tried to look pissed instead of worried. "Let's see if we can get you home without you picking another fight-"

"I didn't pick a fight, Dean. I helped some woman with her bad boyfriend." Sam looked out into the bullpen. Dean raised his brows, followed his gaze to a woman in a red dress with a split lip, waiting in a chair beside an officer's desk.

"She's cute."

Sam sighed, looked off in annoyance, faint little flush of embarrassment-

" _Real_ cute," Dean continued. "I bet she'd be grateful, huh Sammy?"

"Classy, Dean." Sam rolled his eyes, little amused smile just faintly etched there, which had been the point of the comment.

Dean grinned, glanced over as Sam tucked his notebook into his bag. She was a hottie, that was for sure. She looked up, saw Sam was leaving, looked disappointed. Dean gave her a salute. Sam needed a lay. Too bad he was too busy doing _whatever_ to even think about gettin' happy. Well, whatever.

When they were in the parking lot, Dean shook his head over the roof of the impala. "Twenty million cops in this town, and you somehow get in a fight."

"Dean."

"I'm just sayin'-"

"Why are you even here? I called-"

"Yeah, like an _hour_ ago. Saying you got held up but everything was fine. This is fine?"

"Dean, I-"

"Sam? Um, Agent?" The woman Sam rescued looked nervous to be interrupting them. She glanced behind her at the building lights and back. "I'm sorry. I heard one of the officers call you that. You're investigating the murders, right?"

"Um." Sam looked at Dean. Dean shrugged. "I can't comment on that-"

"I understand. I really just wanted to thank you."

Sam shook his head. "I'm just glad-"

Dean raised his brows. He saw it comin', with no time to warn Sam, and honestly, no inclination. She leaned up on her tiptoes to plant a nice juicy thank you right on Sam's mouth. Sam's cheeks went red almost instantly. Oh yeah. He was never gonna live this one down. Dean grinned. If this kept up, Sam'd be out of his funk in no time.

"Right," she said, stepping back again with a smile, looking away like she was surprised at herself. Dean approved. The shy ones were always the most ... creative. "I don't know what I would've- Anyway. Your partner's a brave man," she said to Dean.

Dean winked at her. Sam was staring.

"Yeah. Come on, hero," Dean said, grinning. "Our motel room's waitin'. Ma'am."

* * *

"She was pretty grateful, Sammy," Dean said, popping the tops off a couple of beers.

"Not interested." Sam took one of the bottles and held it against his jaw, slumped down to sit on the bed.

Drama queen.

"Come on, Sam. Tell me you gave her your number, man."

Sam rolled his eyes. Got up and left his beer on the bedside table to go poke at his bruising face in the bathroom mirror. "She'd just been attacked by her boyfriend, I stepped in." Sam waved at his face where blue and purple were already starting to spread out from under the bandage. "He ran off, I took her to the police station to make a statement. That's it."

"So what'd you find out?"

"Huh?"

"From Warner."

"Oh. He wasn't in. I thought I said that on the phone."

Dean frowned. "No, it didn't come up. You feelin' okay? You seem kinda... spaced."

"It's been a long night, that's all."

"You were gone for three hours and you didn't even talk to our lead? What the hell were you doing?"

Sam gave him a look. "I was a witness. They needed my statement. And some paramedic insisted on stitches." He started to pull the bandage away to inspect the stitching job.

Dean shook his head, got up to stand in the bathroom door. "Don't mess with that." He reached up to pull Sam's hands away from the injury.

"It's fine, Dean, just let me-"

"A paramedic stitches you up and you gotta check his work?"

"Get off, Dean, I just wanna see-"

"Just stop poking at it or you're gonna pull 'em out-" Dean took Sam's jaw in his hand and held the end of the bandage Sam had unstuck back down. Sam was tall, but he seemed to shrink at the minor defeat of his once-impressive strength. He looked at Dean like a defiant, untrusting animal, like he'd been betrayed, and Dean remembered having this kid at his mercy in a dungeon in their home, how Sam didn't back down, even when he didn't win. Dean let Sam's jaw go, disgusted with himself. Sam looked away, caught his breath, a hand on his chest and that meant he was struggling for air but didn't want Dean to know.

"I gotta... shower and stuff." He pushed past Dean back into the room. Dean watched him from the doorway of the bathroom, watched him move like a wounded animal, how he didn't meet Dean's eye. He slipped past Dean again, bag in hand, and said, "You wanna watch or what, perv?"

Dean blinked. "What? I mean, whatever. You need any help?" He nodded at Sam's shoulder. Not that Sam ever asked for help getting his shirt off. Not that he ever asked for help, period. And he wasn't even in a sling right now, which was gonna be another conversation. Sam didn't even answer his question, just gave him that _my brother's a moron_ look that occasionally signified that they were okay but just now probably signified something more like _my brother's a moron._

Or maybe it meant _just leave me alone for a while, I got a dangerous substance to ingest._

Dean backed away, hands up. "Just checking."

"I get it," Sam said, leaning on the sink in front of the mirror. "But you can't waste your life worrying about me, Dean."

"No. I can't stop worrying, okay? Not with you."

Sam's face fell, stung.

Dean shook his head. "That's not what I meant-"

"You know just once," Sam said. "Just once I wish you could trust me. Just trust me and leave it alone. I know you can't. I know I've... let you down. In Boston, in - in general, but I-"

"That's not what I meant, Sam." Dean's heart, fuck. "You're my brother. My _little_ brother no matter how freakin' big you are. I'm never not going to worry that something bad is gonna happen to you. I'm not built that way."

Sam nodded, hollow and loose like the way Dean never wanted to see again but kept seeing over and over; Sam didn't believe anything Dean said anymore, Sam didn't see how to dig himself out. Sam was keeping a secret, Dean could see it there in how he didn't meet Dean's eye, how he begged for Dean to trust in him when Dean hadn't said anything about _not_ trusting him. How he kept his bag with him, even in the bathroom, how he disappeared, how he tried to scrub himself clean because maybe he felt impure -

And it didn't matter. Because maybe the alternative was that Sam just stopped moving one day, stopped bothering to keep breathing. Maybe he'd just stop being able to stand upright, maybe he'd disappear into himself. Maybe the thing that had torn him down years before was the only thing keeping him together now. Maybe the thing that was keeping him together was going to tear him down again no matter what Dean did about it.

The door closed and the shower started. Dean stared at it for a long moment before settling himself at the little table to pretend to be working when Sam came out again. Pretend and drink, and drink.

* * *

"Morning," Sam said when Dean rolled over.

"You're chipper."

"Told you. Made of sunshine." Sam tossed a bag of donuts into Dean's chest, held up a cup of coffee in evidence before he set it onto the little table. Dean had made some attempt at research the night before, either before coming to pick Sam up at the station or after they'd gotten back, but apparently Sam had taken too long in the shower, because the room was empty when he got back out, and then he'd fallen asleep before Dean got back.

But that was becoming routine for them. Dean had to leave, had to spin out in a bar somewhere where Sam couldn't see him. Dean didn't know how to stop worrying, how to let go, and who could blame him when shit just kept happening. Sam's plan was to fake it until Dean could relax, be sunshine until Dean could stop flipping out about every little thing. Until Dean could just forget.

Like that would ever happen. Still. Sam grinned and sat at the table, pulled up the newspaper articles and started sorting through the case files again while Dean figured out how to tumble out of bed.

"So what's our plan," Dean mumbled, rolling to sit up with his feet on the floor. He yawned, scratched his chest, hair stuck up. Smiled sleepily, blinked hard to see straight - a pretty good show. Dean was faking it too. Together they could probably have faked their way back to good. They'd done it before.

"Ahh," Sam hmmed. He frowned at a case file. "Go back to the station, talk to Warner."

"Right," Dean said. "And what are you gonna do?"

"You think we should split up?"

Dean levered himself standing, thumped toward the table for his coffee. "No. But you're gonna suggest it. So what are you gonna do?"

Sam sighed. "I thought I'd talk to some of the families. You know, the basics."

"Right right."

"You see anything in this stuff?" Sam asked, nodding at the mess of casefiles.

Dean lowered himself into the chair, dug a donut out of the bag and talked with his mouth full. "Just what you saw. Some of the symbols are Sumerian, some are Enochian-"

"Some are Meso-American, some are Druidic. Yeah. So, you got nothin' too, huh?"

"Yep." Dean frowned, looked up at Sam. "You spent some time at the station not really being like, outwardly investigationy, right? When you were-" He waved in Sam's general face direction.

"Being a witness to a crime? Yeah."

"You notice anything out of the ordinary?"

Sam frowned, dragged over the cooler to sit, thoughtful. "You mean like, since I wasn't actively trying to dig up dirt, were the cops a little less guarded?"

Dean shrugged. "Our main lead is this Warner guy, right? They're gonna be defensive if I just start asking. But maybe they let a little slip when you were there under other circumstances?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah." He shook his head. "I don't know. I didn't notice anything strange. I was kinda..."

"Yeah, I know. Getting stitched up by some paramedic. How you feelin' anyway?"

Dean nodded at Sam's shoulder and Sam put a hand up to it in reflex. "I'm good. I'm okay. They gave me an ice pack for it at the station."

"Oughta have it strapped up-"

"I hate that thing, Dean. I'm fine."

"Okay okay. Don't come cryin' to me."

"I definitely won't," Sam said. And it was a joke. But Dean looked away from him, and Sam felt suddenly terrible for saying it. They'd been strained since - well, since forever, honestly. Couldn't catch a break where they could just chill and drink beers and watch the game. Everything was life and death, and that was mostly Sam's fault. It was _all_ Sam's fault, really. But the honest truth was, Sam _couldn't_ go crying to Dean, not anymore. Not if he wanted Dean to be okay for once in his life. So he grinned. "I know what a sympathetic cryer you are."

Dean chuckled, then groaned. "Ow. Don't make me laugh." He drained a bit of his coffee and stood, turned toward the bathroom. "Okay. I'm showerin'. You heading out?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"You should take the car."

"No, I can-"

Dean turned back to him, serious. "You should take the car. If something happens - it's got a clean registration again thanks to Charlie."

"Dean, I-"

"No arguments, Sam. You shouldn't be driving a stolen car right now, and that's that. And if you start feelin'... whatever, you just pull over."

"I haven't had a seizure in like three weeks."

"But you still have dizzy spells - Sam just please. For me."

Sam rolled his eyes, picked up the keys from the table. "Fine." He turned to go.

"And Sam?"

"God _, what?_ "

"You run into anyone's ex-boyfriend, you call me, okay?" Dean grinned, winked.

Sam chuckled. "Yeah. Okay."

* * *

Detective Warner was in a hurry. But was it an "I got more serial murders to keep off the Fed radar" hurry, or an "I just ran out of donuts" hurry? Dean straightened up, stepped into the guy's path when he tried to exit the break room.

"Detective Warner?"

Warner looked Dean up and down. "Can I help you?"

"Agent Bernson." He flashed his badge, glanced around like he'd rather be anywhere else. "I'm here about your crop of organ donors."

"Come again?"

"You got some bodies missing some parts. My partner and I are looking into it."

"How did-" Warner frowned at Dean. "Come on to my office."

His "office" was just a desk, but it was against the far back wall and had a window and a cubicle wall to give him some privacy. Dean whistled in mock admiration.

"Wow. You must be pretty high up in the department."

Warner stepped around Dean and seated himself at his desk. Looked up at Dean, unruffled. "I sent my report to the Bureau," Warner said, gesturing at a guest chair across from him. "I was assured we'd be allowed to handle the case."

"I thought they were unrelated."

"The cas _es_ , then. You wanna answer my question?"

"You didn't ask a question."

"Listen, smart guy-"

"My friends call me Agent."

" _Agent._ These cases _are_ unrelated. A number of copycats. We were pressured to release details of the first case to the public, but you know as well as I do we tend to keep specifics out of the press. These murders fit the _released_ details to a tee, but the missing organs and the weird satanic symbols don't match up." Warner smiled, smug. "They're copycats. Simple as that. Sorry to have wasted your time, but I did send my report."

"And what about the report on Bernard Hale?"

The detective rolled his eyes. "That incident was a misstep on the part of an officer of this department who is under review. Details about the first case got out that weren't supposed to. But that doesn't mean as much as I'm sure you'd like it to."

"And how's that?"

"In cases like these, we find the matter is as simple as copycats just not doing the work. There's a reason they aren't serial killers with their own resumes, Agent. They want to kill without the additional effort, but they also don't want to get caught. So they do the least amount of work that will give them a reasonable chance of having their murders pinned on someone else. In this case, the Bernard Hale story comes out, we get a copycat who does Adam Lawson using the published details. But we don't publish Adam Lawson's details, and the next copycat just notices a pattern of killings, doesn't search back to find the right details. Copycats are lazy. That at least makes them easy to spot." He waited a moment, narrowed his eyes at Dean. Then: "This _was_ all in my report."

Dean sat back in the chair, watched the man. He wasn't as surprised as Dean had guessed he'd be - but of course he'd been assuming the guy was dirty, covering up a monster conspiracy. He'd assumed the guy would be spooked to find the Feds were looking into the case after the effort he'd gone through to put them off the trail. This guy was either awesome at playing it cool, or he was innocent and just kind of a dick.

"Right. Right. Well, as long as we're here," Dean said. "We might as well corroborate that report of yours. Mind if I take a look at your case files?" Of course they already had the case files. Dean watched for the guy's reaction, but he just sighed, put-upon.

"Fine. I'll have someone bring you copies. Where are you staying?"

"Lincoln Logs, Room 234. Cute town you got here," Dean said. "Lincoln Logs. Get it? Like the cabin?"

Warner didn't crack a smile. "Yeah. We're real cute." He frowned. "So where's your partner? Out getting more hair gel?" He glanced up at Dean's spiky hair with some disdain.

"Out on another lead," Dean said, shifting uncomfortably. Hair gel. He'd show this guy... hair gel. But it _was_ an opening - "You'da met him if you'd been at work last night. I took the opportunity to check in at the front. You were on duty, Detective."

Warner looked at Dean like he was maybe a bit confused about why Dean would be so interested in his whereabouts. Again, either real good, or actually innocent. Dean was leaning toward innocent. "I had an emergency at home," he said. "May I ask why the Bureau disagrees with my report?"

Dean shrugged. "I dunno. They just tell us to go and we go."

"Right." Warner leaned in. "You know something, don't you. Something us here on the ground don't know. Come on."

Dean frowned.

"We both want the same thing, Agent. Now if you know something-"

"No," Dean said. "Sorry."

* * *

Mrs. Hopkins lived in a small one-story on the edge of town, fenced yard, girl's bike parked just outside the gate, a tree looming up behind the house. She was the third person on Sam's list, and he dreaded interviewing her; Emily's death was so recent, he was sure to get nothing out of her grieving mother.

But he sat on her couch and accepted coffee and nodded sympathetically. Jotted notes into his notebook, about Emily Hopkins having absolutely zero enemies, absolutely zero connections to the other victims, and absolutely zero "strange experiences" in the days before her murder. Dean should have taken this job; Ellie Hopkins was only in her late 30s, attractive. Dean liked brunettes, right? He'd have charmed her.

"What about you, Mrs. Hopkins?" Sam said. He smiled just a little. _Yes, I know it's hard. Yes, I know you can't believe she's gone. Yes, I know I know, god I know._ "Is there anyone who might want to harm Emily because..."

"Because they were trying to hurt me?" she asked, breathless like she hadn't thought of that before, and Sam wanted to take it back, pretend he hadn't put that thought into her head. Of course she hadn't thought of that.

"Maybe. Can you think of anyone who might be... holding a grudge," he suggested. "Or jealous?"

"No. My ex-husband, maybe, but he would never hurt Emily. For god's sake, she's who we fought over."

Sam pressed his lips together in thought. Wrote it down. It was unlikely, but if it had been an accident - spells and deals were practically booby-trapped to backfire on the people using them. The ex might have been responsible without even meaning to be. "Did your ex know the families of the other victims?"

"Not that I know of." She worried her hands in her lap. "I know I'm not being very helpful. I just can't understand how something like this happens. I-"

Her grief was heavy. It was too soon to do this to her. She'd given her statement, and Sam could never give her a real answer even if he did figure out what killed her daughter. Around the room were photos of the girl Sam had only seen in grisly crime scene shots - awards on display, a big-grinned child with long pigtails, an eager competitor in sports. Mrs. Hopkins would never watch her grow and get her heart broken and become strong from it, win and lose things, work her way through life. Sam closed his eyes briefly. That familiar sense of directionless loss, a waiting dark, adrift with no hope for help to come -

"I'm so sorry for your loss, Mrs. Hopkins."

"Will you call me Ellie, please?"

"Ellie. I'm going to do everything I can to find out the truth. I swear to you."

"Will you - can you stay, just a moment. I just." She looked around, she was on the edge of something terrible. Sam recognized the feeling.

There was one more family Sam needed to interview, but it was only eleven in the morning. He glanced at his phone: no calls from Dean.

"Please?"

Sam nodded. Thought a moment. The broken mother of another lost girl, Amber's face floated up- "What do you think about... getting out of here? I know it feels like a comfort to stay, but it might do some good to get out of the house. Lunch? On me."

Ellie frowned at him, nodded resolutely. "Okay. Okay that might be good. You won't get into trouble?"

"We haven't concluded our interview," he said, smiling warmly. "What's there to get in trouble for?"

She smiled at him, teary. "I need to clean up first." She gestured at herself, house clothes, hair in a messy ponytail. Sam nodded.

"Fine. I'm gonna step outside and give my partner a call, let him know I'll be late checking in. I'm just outside, whenever you're ready."

She disappeared into her bathroom, down a hall with a door that still had the name "Emily" in funny blue blocky letters on it, a room that would probably remain in a state of 17-year-old disarray until her mother drank herself into finally clearing everything out, or until she sold the house so she didn't have to walk past it anymore. Sam blew out a shaky breath. He had a headache. He should have let Dean take this one, definitely.

He waited until he was standing out on her front steps before pulling his phone back out to give Dean a call. There were probably catcalls in his future, moving in on the grieving MILF or something else equally gross. It was all an act, an attempt to get Sam to lighten up, and maybe one day Dean would realize it didn't work, but until then-

"Psst. Hey. Winchester."

Sam looked over, phone to his ear. Cancelled the call half a second later when it caught up to him that Ellie Hopkins' next door neighbor really shouldn't have known his name. Peering over Mrs. Hopkins' neighbor's hedge was a guy in a clean button-down suburban dad type, the obviously-possessed Mr. Gill.

He stalked toward the thing, fingering the hilt of the demon knife in his jacket. "You wanna maybe get out of that person and we can talk like grown-ups?"

Mr. Gill grinned. "Oh man. I can't believe I get to be the one to tell you this."

* * *

Sam wasn't due back for a few hours yet by the time Dean was finished with Detective Asshole at the station. He had plenty of time to kill, and the cable in the motel wasn't great on the porn. And yeah okay maybe having a real kitchen at home was starting to spoil him, sue him. He stopped on the way back to the motel for some groceries. Burgers for him that he'd make and eat before Sam got home, and something fresh for Sam, raw but full of the stuff he and Kevin had worked out would help Sam stay on his feet.

On his feet and maybe needing less assistance from whatever he was doing in the bathroom where Dean couldn't see him.

Anyway, he had the ingredients for a fruit and kale smoothie, a kind of trail mix Kevin had concocted, some multi-vitamins, a brand new mini blender thing he figured he and Sam could just take on the road with them from now on.

And he spread it all out on the table where Sam's research had been and looked at it with no small amount of pride. They'd come a long way from making ramen in cups with the motel room coffee pot for boiling water. It'd been a while since they'd had to make do with greasy food or nothin', which left Sam feeling slow and gross even if Dean was fine with it. He didn't know if Dad would have been proud of him for owning a portable smoothie blender or appalled, and he couldn't quite make himself care. Sam couldn't manage actual food, but by god he was gonna eat.

His phone rang as he was making up a patty for his burger. "Yello?" he said, catching the phone between his shoulder and ear.

" _Dean._ "

"Sammy! Listen kid, I got a feast-"

" _I'm not coming back._ "

"What?"

" _Listen, I get it. You do what you think you have to, for me, for - for us. But this is just, it's unforgivable, man and I_ -"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Unforgivable? Yeah, like _he_ was the one downing demon blood.

" _I know about you and Abaddon._ "

Dean went cold. "Sammy, wait-"

" _I can't believe you'd do something so stupid. Trusting a demon? Don't you ever learn?_ "

"Like you're one to talk - what about Crowley, huh? He's your little pet, not mine."

" _Crowley's declawed, man. But Abaddon? You know she threw me through a window, right? Or do you just not care? Maybe you care about how I'm the one who lit her up and thwarted her attempt on Crowley's life, her chance at the throne. You know she's alive and kicking, you know it for_ sure _and you don't think you oughta tell me? Considering she's probably pretty pissed at me? I mean you've done a lot of shit man, but I was just starting to think I could trust you to have my back. And it turns out I can't._ "

"Sam please-"

" _Like I said, I get it._ " Sam's voice went quiet, thoughtful. " _I understand that you do what you think you have to for me. But I can't get over this, not right now. Give me some time, a week tops, okay? And I'll come home and we'll talk it out or whatever. I need some space and I'm begging you to give it to me._ "

"Sam-"

" _Please._ "

"Anything, but Sammy please. You said it yourself Abaddon probably has you at the top of her hitlist."

" _I can handle myself Dean. I thought I'd proven that to you. Guess I have to prove myself again._ "

The phone went dead. Dean went numb. Slouched into the chair at the table. And now he saw Sam's laptop gone, the case files, gone. Sam's bag gone and his bed made. His toothbrush gone from the bathroom and Sam gone gone gone.

* * *

_**NOW** _

It had become easy, to swallow, to stomach. The glide of it down his throat, the press of it through his veins, the spark through his nervous system, lighting him up.

Easy.

He could do it without a headache now, without effort, he didn't need to be present, he didn't need to see, he closed his eyes and reached with the power coiled in the back of his skull, and another demon melted into hell. Let Dean come. Let Dean find him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Episode Seven**  
" **Sanguis Sanctus"  
Chapter Three**

_**Ten Days Earlier** _

Dean stared at Sam's bed. Stared at nothing and Sam's empty motel bed. Phone on mechanical movement up to his ear, buttons pressed, already ringing. Who was he calling? Sammy was gone.

" _Dean?_ "

Oh. Kevin. Yeah, smart. Good goin' Dean. Call home for help. "Kevin. Sam's-"

" _We know. He's on a case in Kentucky and won't be back for another week at least._ "

Kentucky? Well now he knew one place Sam _wouldn't_ be. His hands itched for a steering wheel, for the soft fabric of Sam's shirt in his fingers, dragging the kid back home where Dean could take care of him. Sam Sam Sam-

" _Dean, you okay? It's just a week, man. He said you were coming back to supervise the spell thing?_ "

"Yeah. Yeah. I am. I'll be home in a day."

He hung up on Kevin's goodbye. Sam had already called them, hadn't ratted Dean out. He was planning to be home in a week, he was gonna be okay. He'd even said they could talk it out. Dean was always ragging on Sam for walking away, so part of him had its hands on its hips like _be glad he's acting like himself, you idiot_.

His phone booped.

_Your car's in front of Mrs. Hopkins' house, btw. See you in a week._

Dean closed his eyes. See you in a week. A promise, Sammy? Because we're so good at promises. But somehow he felt a bit better getting a text from him. It was like fifteen years ago all over again. Sam could say he needed to be out of hunting or away from Dean all he wanted, but he texted Dean and that little connection flared back to life, or maybe it never died, lying in wait for a spark.

Fine. Fine. He'd give it... four days. Maybe five. Probably three. But some days. For Sam to cool down.

He didn't notice the driving time. Seriously, thirteen hours of worrying and regretting and reconvincing himself that Sam was okay. The road must have passed under his wheels, the car must have needed gas, he might have stopped for road food and had to have stopped to piss, but he didn't remember it.

Instead he banged open the bunker door and thumped down the stairs. It was 3:00 am, and he didn't care. If they weren't all awake worrying about Sam, they should have been.

As it turned out, they were all awake. Not worrying about Sam.

Kevin sat at the map table in the war room, bent over the tablet and eating cornflakes, headphones on. There wasn't anyone else in the room, but he had headphones on anyway, and Dean frowned at him for a good solid minute waiting for him to feel the weight of Dean's glare and turn around. That, uh, didn't happen.

Dean found Cas and Crowley bickering in the kitchen. Neither of them had any taste, but they appeared to be fighting over whether or not cayenne pepper went into making cakes - Crowley maintained that it was the sort of ingredient gourmet chefs used to give the cake a spicy sweet kick, while Cas complained that it was too hot and no human would ever ingest cayenne pepper in any case, not voluntarily, and-

"Knock it off, will ya, you're both pretty."

"Dean!" Cas said. "Dean. Please inform Crowley-"

"Don't be ridiculous. Squirrel's palate is probably light years beyond yours, you baby-tongued human puppet-"

"What did I _just_ say?" Dean growled.

Cas and Crowley looked at each other, turned back to Dean.

"Did you drive all night?" Cas said, as Crowley was saying, "Goodness, a few hours without the sidekick and you're already testy. This'll be a loooovely week."

"Can it, both of you."

"You're not worried?" Cas said.

 _Yes. Yes god._ "No. Sam can handle himself, okay? We're gonna leave him alone while he's gone. I mean it. No texting, no bothering him. That's final."

"If you say so," Crowley said.

"What are you all doing up, anyway? It's 3:00 am."

"We're waiting for a breakthrough."

* * *

"Kevin, slow the fuck down. Pause, rewind, now what?"

"I think I know how to get Cas' grace back. I mean. It's gonna be like almost impossible, I mean like actually impossible, considering who has it and why and I'm not sure we'll survive it, but if we can get like, close to it, I think I can make a thing that will sync with the modulation of Cas' grace, specifically, I mean it's like a cosmic waveform of energy, right, and make it kind of like, swoosh to him like automatically, if I can get the right materials and if I can get the math right which I think I can, and I'm not actually sure a thing with the right crystalline structure exists and if the modulation is off the grace of some random angel might get sucked into him or maybe he'll just break apart because it isn't meant to go into his actual body, but either way, I think I can do it."

Dean blinked. "Swoosh?"

Kevin took a deep breath, grinned. "Swoosh."

"So what are you waiting for then?"

Kevin laughed. "Ha. Ha hah. What am I waiting for? Okay, well I need like some kind of way to measure the modulation of a grace we don't currently have, using only the previous host for that grace, and I need to find out if I can just mail order a crystal from like an internet hippy store or if I have to like _make_ it from scratch, and by the way I'm not an engineer okay? And it would really help if I had like five computers working on the math, but sure okay, I'm just dragging my heels."

Dean turned to Cas. "You let him drink coffee, didn't you?"

"No one allows Kevin Tran to do anything. Kevin Tran just is."

Crowley stifled a giggle. Dean rolled his eyes.

"Ooookay. It's time for all good prophets to go to bed."

Kevin kept talking even as Dean pulled him from his chair and pointed him at his bedroom. "I mean I think it's doable. Why would it be in the tablet if it wasn't doable? I mean it's an angel tablet so maybe it's not doable for humans, but then didn't Cas say the tablet was meant for humans, to close off earth in case - well I'm not sure he's right about that, since we can't even read it without super special prophet powers, but even so, we have other angels on our side now. And Cas gets his powers back and maybe that breaks the spell and the angels can go home and that's like half our problem taken care of, right?"

Dean nodded along. The more the kid talked, the more pissed he got that Kevin wasn't working on how to pause the Trials for Sam, how to stop them altogether. He didn't care that apparently there was a thing out there that Sam loved more than life itself that he could sacrifice and it'd be over with. He didn't care that Sam didn't have to lose his life to close the gates to hell. He would settle for Sam being able to stand under his own power, and just now, when Sam was insisting on going it alone because Dean had made a really terrible decision with Abaddon, Dean didn't want to listen to some kid _not_ solving Sam's little problem.

"Okay, okay," he said, until he got Kevin into his room and had closed the door. He was pretty sure Kevin wasn't sleeping behind it, still jabbering away, but maybe distance from the tablet would give him some space to say to himself, self, you are going crazy, stop it.

"I'm going to bed," Dean said to the other two. "You're human, go to bed. You're... go to bed anyway," he said to Crowley. "I've been home five minutes and you're already driving me nuts."

It was two days before Dean picked up the phone to give Sam a call. Shit went down between them now and then, and in the past, his mistakes had always revolved around being too stubborn to call, and he wasn't going to ride that road again. There was a Sam in another timeline who made it clear that sometimes he was supposed to pester Sam because Sam wanted to talk no matter what he actually said, but sometimes he was just supposed to let Sam burn it off. He called in the morning over coffee. Just to talk, to chat about how Sam's "case" was going, to thank him for not outing him to the rest. He didn't regret making that deal with Abaddon, especially since they had no real proof that Lucifer _couldn't_ rise again, and of course she'd lifted the whole Fed craziness somehow - not that he was gonna tell _Sam_ any of that. Anyway, he didn't regret it, but he wasn't proud of it either. Better that no one else knew.

But it didn't matter what he was and wasn't going to tell Sam; Sam didn't pick up.

He called again around noon, and again at six or so, and left him a message saying _Sammy, pick up. I know you're pissed. I'm sorry. Come on, just let me explain. Or don't, just pick up and talk to me before I start to get worried. I mean you can do that, can't you?_

And then he hung up before he could start to yell about how Sam wasn't thinking about how hard this would be for Dean, how difficult it was to let Sam go off when Abaddon was out there, when Sam sometimes couldn't get out of bed without help, how sometimes Sam heard voices, how fucking _dangerous_ it was for Sam to be off on his own right now - because all that would do, true or not, was drive Sam further away. He'd learned this lesson outside a convent where Sam stood with Ruby, where Lilith lay dead on the ground.

When he didn't answer again at 2:00 am when Dean was drowning in whiskey in the war room alone, having scattered the other bunker dwellers to the four corners with drunken ranting, Dean started to track him. Cell phone GPS, all of his aliases. No hits. He banged on the door to Sam's old room where Crowley could often be found being a creepmaster.

"Find him. Now."

Crowley looked up from where he was seated on the floor, writing in a notebook. "Moose? Why."

"Like you care about having a reason. I'm surprised you haven't been keeping tabs on him from the moment we left four days ago."

Crowley stood, straightened his jacket sleeves. Watched Dean from the side for a moment, two, three, then -

"I have been."

"What?"

"I have been keeping tabs on him from the moment you left four days ago."

Dean frowned, stepped toward Crowley, felt his voice pitch into gravel: "You wanna say that again?"

"I don't trust you with him, Squirrel. Can you blame me? Oh, anyone can see you're _trying_ , but then you chain him up in a dungeon and well, I only want _me_ to chain him up in a dungeon-"

"Excuse me?"

"You know, in a friendly way. A friendly dungeon fun-fest. Pity. He'll probably never walk voluntarily into a dungeon again-"

Dean was to Crowley and had him an inch off the ground in moments. He shook the demon by the throat.

"Down boy," Crowley said, unperturbed. "I assure you, the key word is voluntary. _You're_ the one who doesn't take 'please don't lock me up' for an answer."

"I'm going to end you, I don't care if you're Sam's pet. Now where is he."

Crowley raised a brow. Gestured with his chin at his current position _above_ the floor, and straightened his jacket once Dean had put him back down. "I don't know."

"What?"

"I said, I don't know. He went off the grid just before he called here. He doesn't want to be found, Dean-o."

"And that doesn't worry you?"

"Help a demon out here, hero. Am I supposed to worry about Sam or not? Which answer does the Great Vague Avenger want this time?"

Dean squeezed his hands into fists. He left Crowley in Sam's old room, stalked through the dim-lit bunker aimlessly. Kevin wouldn't know anything. Crowley was useless.

Cas. Cas, though. He could _pray_ to Sam - the little Sam voice in his head corrected him, _It's not praying Dean_ \- Cas could pray to Sam. And Sam couldn't reply, but maybe-

He found Cas holed away in a storage room on a lower level. There were plenty of bedroom-type rooms that'd have been more comfortable, but Cas had made the cold, metal-walled room into something of a haven for the obsessed, complete with murder wall including every sighting of supposed "Federal BI men" Cas had taken note of over the last month. Dean whistled at the wall. "Wow, someone's been watching way too much TV."

Cas whirled around from where he was bent over a metal desk. "Dean." He looked back at the photos and articles and hand written snippets. "I just-"

"Okay. This?" Dean gestured at the crazy murder wall. "-is a conversation, but just now I have a favor to ask."

Cas swiveled his antique desk chair all the way around to face Dean. He was dressed in pajama bottoms with duck faces on them, a tee shirt, his trench coat over all of it, and okay, it counted as trying. Little steps for the baby human.

"What do you need?"

"I need you to pray to Sam."

Cas frowned. "But I thought-"

"I know. And under normal circumstances, yes, I want you to stay the fuck out of his head. But he's not answering my calls and I'm worried about his uh, case. And he's not where he said he'd be, so I'm worried something's wrong."

"You can track him-"

"Can't get a cell phone trace, he's not using any of his usual aliases, he's hex bagged himself so Crowley can't track him-"

"You don't think he's really on a case, do you."

Dean watched Cas. Perceptive little asshole. "I don't know. All I do know is that Crowley's not wrong, Abaddon's got Sam at the top of her hit list, and we just don't know what she's capable of right now." And thank god Cas wasn't an angel, because he'd have seen through Dean in a heartbeat. Abaddon would be a fool to mess with Sam if she was gonna stoop to using him as leverage to get Dean to help her. In fact, Sam probably had some demon protection right now whether he wanted it or not. Which meant Sam was just really pissed at Dean rather than in trouble, and Dean tamped down his anger. "So?"

Cas sighed. "Okay. If you think it's wise."

Dean grumbled. "Every five minutes I gotta beg you to stop accidentally prayin' to him and now I gotta convince you to do it on purpose?"

"What shall I communicate to him?"

Dean frowned. "Just that I'm - _we're_ worried, and to pick up the phone and let us know he's okay."

Cas nodded. Closed his eyes, bowed his head, crossed his legs campfire style in the seat of his chair, hands clasped. He breathed out, in, slow, even. Dean watched, impatience turning to concern as Cas' hands started to shake. His mouth opened, lower lip trembling. A tear slipped from his closed eyes, traced down his face. When he opened his eyes again, they were dark with grief, filmed over wet, unseeing until Dean put his hand on Cas' knee. Cas blinked the wet away, breathed out in a settling gust, smiled a little shaky.

"Done. But you know I can't receive an answer, Dean."

"That's okay. I'm counting on your message to get him to pick up the phone."

"Give him a moment," Cas said, serious.

Dean paused with his phone out, blew out a breath and pulled over the other chair in the room to wait. "Yeah. Okay."

A minute passed, a minute in which Dean wanted to ask what was so important and special about _prayer_ that it moved Cas to tears, that it broke Sam in half, that so many people raised their hands in religious fervor during it. Dean had prayed to Cas, and he must have done it right because Cas had answered, but it'd never felt like that. It'd never affected him like that. But Cas had his eyes closed like he was figuring himself out and the guy was just fragments of angel and human trying to co-exist anyway, so Dean just fidgeted until a minute was up. He hit speeddial #2 and waited for the phone to ring.

Once, twice, Sam picked up.

" _Dean_."

To his credit, he didn't sound nearly as messed up by Cas' prayer as he had before. Maybe he really was feeling better.

"Sammy-"

" _It's Sam. Listen. I'm just gonna rip the bandaid off. I'm not coming back, Dean. This thing with you and Abaddon - she killed our grandfather. She's the reason Dad grew up without a father of his own and probably the reason Dad was shit to us. How can you betray him like this? How can you disrespect Henry's memory? I thought family was everything to you. And it just got me thinking, how many times you've screwed me over, and I just forgave you. But I shouldn't have, because you just do the same thing over and over, you never fucking learn and I can't live like that. I can't. So just don't even look for me, man. I'm done._ "

"Sam - no. You're not fucking done, what else do I have to _do_. I'm trying, and fuck, I'm _sorry_ if life hasn't been fucking _peachy_ for you, but we got it hard. _Both_ of us. And you're just gonna turn your back on hunting-?"

Sam sighed. " _Why do you think that if I'm not with you, it means I'm not hunting? I can do this without you. But you never did believe in me. I shouldn't be surprised_."

Fuck. "Sam - hold on. Wait a minute. Just tell me where you are. Is it that kinda funky town we were in a couple months ago?"

There was a moment. Dean held his breath - " _No. No Dean. No 'funky town.' Just me, saying goodbye_." Sam sounded sad. Obviously he was struggling with the decision, but it didn't make Dean feel any better.

Sam hung up. Dean listened to the tone of the disconnected phone call for a long moment.

"Dean?"

"I'm goin' to bed. G'night Cas."

* * *

"This can't be right," Kevin said. He'd been saying it all day; it was starting to grate.

"Look," Dean said, pouring himself another whiskey. "We got code words, him and me. He didn't give one. He's done. He's left me and you and Cas and Crowley here in this dump and he's just gone."

"But you aren't going to leave it there, are you? I mean. He has projects. He was cataloguing the bottom level archives. His stuff is here."

Dean turned to Kevin, Kevin shut his mouth. "Name one thing in that temporary box we turned into a bedroom that Sam put there himself, that he _cares_ about. Do it." Silence. "That's what I thought. He hasn't made this place a home."

"But why leave?"

Dean downed the couple of shots he'd poured for himself. "Who the fuck knows."

Kevin frowned, took his phone out.

"He's not gonna pick up," Dean warned. Kevin knew better. He'd called like fifty times just that Dean had seen.

Kevin tried anyway, left a brief message, clicked off. Dean could feel him staring, but he didn't say anything else, just stormed off to his room.

Dean poured himself another whiskey. Cas was with Lethaniel, scouting another group of angels to see if they would join up with Lethaniel's group of non-asshole angels. Crowley had been shut away in Sam's room, who knew what he was doing in there. So Dean was alone when his phone booped. Sam, thank god-

_Heard little brother flew the coop._

Fuck. Abaddon. He ignored her.

_You must be so worried._

_A little birdie told me he's hunting._

_Come on, Dean. Aren't you interested in what little brother's been up to?_

Dean growled and tapped out a reply: _If you know what's good for you, you'll do your best to keep him alive. No Sam, no me. Got it?_

_Now now, I'm not all-powerful. Anyway, I can't even get close to him. Not right now._

Dean frowned. _Meaning?_

_You might be interested in what he's doing, that's all. Gotta go._

He texted her back a million times, asking for more information. She didn't respond. But Sam had said he could hunt alone, and if Abaddon or her minions couldn't get near him - _Fuck_.

* * *

Kevin kept calling the rest of the day, but Sam never did pick up. He left messages: Sam, it's me. I know Dean's a dick, but what could be so bad that you can't come home? Sam, it's me, look whatever Dean did, I'm not defending him, but you have family here who need you. You can't leave me alone with Crowley and Dean, man, that's just cruel. Sam, seriously, you can't just abandon me again. I'm gonna develop a complex, dude.

Sam never called back, but Kevin did get one text that said _Sorry Kevin. I'll drop you a line sometime, when I've got stuff figured out._

Abandoned, again. By someone Kevin thought understood him best out of everyone in their fracked up family.

So Kevin did what he did best; there was an answer in that tablet to put the Trials on hold, and he was gonna find it, and then he was gonna find Sam, and Sam would come home and everything would be okay.

Yeah, everything would be okay. So what if his bourbon intake was higher than usual. So what if he and Dean were kinda like in a competition to see who'd be the first to set their breath on fire by alcohol content alone. Sam would come home and Kevin would be why.

By the third day of his mission, he'd only discovered yet another list of angel names. He wandered into the kitchen for a bowl of cornflakes at like 4:00 am and found Dean sitting in front of a beer and a cup of strong black coffee, marking spaces on a map.

Kevin tried to look over his shoulder, and ended up on his ass on the floor, Dean pushing his hand through his hair and looking really damned jumpy, mumbling that he was sorry, Kevin had startled him - he rolled up his map and stomped off with it.

Sam really needed to come home. Nothing was right when he was gone.

* * *

"I told you, Dean, I can't sense anything from Sam when I pray. Just as you couldn't sense anything from me when you prayed."

Dean paced. He'd found Cas in his little obsession-cave and closed the door. He wasn't ready for Kevin to know this little tid-bit of Sam's history, and he really wasn't interested in Crowley's opinion.

"Fine. Fine then. Get Lethaniel to track him then."

"She has tried. When you first expressed interest in finding Sam, I asked her to assist."

"When were you gonna tell me?"

"I wasn't. Not until I knew more about why Sam left."

"What the hell does that mean?"

Cas looked Dean straight in the eye. "It means that while you have always been motivated by love, you have not always acted in Sam's best interests. I have felt humbled by your dedication to Sam's life, many times over. But I have come to understand that the best motivations do not excuse the actions one has taken."

"Okay, listen. You've screwed him over so many times, and you're telling _me_ -"

"I've since learned. But it doesn't matter - Lethaniel could not find him. His ribcage sigils are still intact. Other magical means of finding him are also being blocked."

Dean took a breath, steadied himself. It was galling to be told by someone who had harmed Sam so many times over that _he_ didn't act in Sam's best interests. There was gonna be a reckoning, a real conversation about this. He wasn't gonna keep ignoring the whole "your good friend Cas let Sam out of the panic room" thing.

"Fine. It doesn't matter. I think I have a way to find him. Look."

Dean shoved everything off the little desk in Cas' hidey-hole and spread out the map. Little red circles dotted it. Dean shuffled through photos and set one by each red circle - he saw the moment Cas understood.

"Those are demon exorcisms. I mean, they're _Sam Winchester_ demon exorcisms."

"I know. Look at the burn pattern on the ground, there. He's not killing, just exorcising. I think he's hunting."

Cas frowned at the photos, looked up at Dean with his brows together. "You mean you think he's drinking _demon blood_?"

"To feel better, at first," Dean said. "And I let it go on because he was so close to the edge all the time, you know, he was barely breathing there at the end. And the Trials thing just keeps going and he's - I couldn't stand to watch him turn into a skeleton, and this stuff keeps him moving. But I ain't letting him get this far off the reservation, not this time. We're gonna find him. He thinks we can't track him because he's being careful, but he doesn't know we know what he's doing."

Cas picked up a photo, spread his hands in question. "So then if we can track him, why aren't we on our way to him right now? This is a very dangerous substance, no matter what good it allows him to do."

Dean rolled his eyes, but the conversation about whether or not Sammy's intentions made something a good thing would have to wait. "Because the pattern's... incomplete. I mean I can't track it. It's erratic, it's nonsense. I was hoping you had some insight."

Cas studied the map a bit longer, shaking his head. "We should get Kevin and Crowley involved. We can remove the photos, if you like."

An hour later, Dean had called another family meeting.

"What makes these spots special?" Kevin asked.

"You've got evidence of a Moose sighting, have you?" said Crowley.

Dean waved them off. "Nevermind. Just look at this map and the times I've written in. This is where Sam has been. I can't figure a pattern."

Crowley frowned. "Where did you get this information?"

"Sources," Dean growled. "Why, you know something?" Dean stared Crowley down, Crowley flicked a glance at Kevin and shrugged.

"Well, there's one thing. There's been demon activity in each place." He looked around. "What, I keep up with Demons Weekly."

Kevin started jotting down notes in his notebook. "The overall shape of the pattern isn't like, a symbol or anything. And there's like _nothing_ in these places. They're just tiny little towns, farming communities. Hang on." He pulled out his phone and took a snapshot of the map. "I'm texting this to Charlie. More brains are better than three." He looked at Crowley. "Three and a half."

"You're too kind."

Cas squinted. "There doesn't seem to be an identifiable center of activity, a home base from which Sam might be working."

"Hunting demons," Crowley said, nodding. "Alone."

"Probably feels guilty for not closing the gates. Now he's on a mission to send as many of them back to hell as he can," Kevin suggested.

"If you're all done psychoanalyzing my brother?" Dean growled. "Come on. Ideas, people."

"Sam doesn't need a home base," Cas pointed out. "Until this bunker, you've never had a stable location from which to work."

Dean sighed. "Theoretically that's true. Sam could be setting up shop for just a few hours before moving on. But Sam knows I know that, he knows I'll be looking for him to keep moving. I'm betting he's actually staying put in a space that's heavily warded."

A buzz. "Oh, Charlie texted back." Kevin frowned at his phone. "She says she's got nothing, but she'll start doing some research."

Cas' eyebrows lifted. He touched Dean's elbow, turned away from the table, and Dean followed him. "Dean. We aren't going to find a pattern in this data. Sam's not travelling like a human. He isn't constrained to a certain radius in a certain amount of time."

Dean closed his eyes. Obviously. "He's got some demon bitch with him, a chauffeur-slash-mini-bar all in one. Goddammit." He thought a moment. Looked at the others. "Okay," he said, turning back. "I have an idea to flush him out, get more data. There's some recording equipment in the server room, get it." Kevin scurried off. Dean turned to Cas. "When I tell you, you're gonna pray, just like before. Crowley, I need you to go get Charlie for me, and then be on deck ready to teleport my ass right to him-"

"I can't find him, I told you."

"I know. And this is a long shot. But we gotta try, right?"

"What's your plan?"

Dean sighed, met Cas' gaze. He was concerned, they were all concerned. Half of them didn't even know what to really be concerned about, and yet there it was. "We're gonna make him mad. Get him to pick up the phone again. And we're gonna record every second of that phone call. There's gotta be some clue to his whereabouts." And of course maybe Sam blurted out something about Abaddon, but it was a risk he had to take.

Dean was on the phone with Charlie, had to tell her to burn her hex bag so Crowley could find her, but she did it while asking a million questions a mile a minute, and she didn't stop even as Dean let them both in the front door and walked them back to the war room, where Kevin was just setting out the last of the ancient recording equipment.

Charlie whistled. "Wowie. This is old. Jurassic. What are you gonna do with it? Auction? I bet you could get a bunch-"

"You're gonna hook it up for me."

Charlie turned to stare. "Um."

"We're lookin' for someone-"

"Where's Sam?"

"We're lookin' for Sam," Dean amended. "He's pissed at me, he went off doing some hunt."

"So... like a completely normal person, you need to stalk him and bring him back?"

"Pretty much. Listen, you don't understand me and Sam, okay? I don't care what you read in those books. Sam does this sometimes, but just now Abaddon is on the loose, Crowley says Sam's probably at the top of the world-wide Demon hitlist. He's too sick to be dealing with the kind of target he's got on his back right now. So yeah, you're gonna help me find him, or so help me-"

"I'm gonna help you find him. But not because of your awesome speech. Because that? Was terrible. Not a good motivational speech at _all_. Like really, it was the opposite of motivational. But I'll do it for Sassafrass. What's the plan?"

"I'm gonna call him, and we're gonna record it, and then we're gonna listen for clues about where he might be holed up."

Charlie twisted her mouth up in doubt. "You saw this in a tv show, didn't you."

"Shut up and do it already."

Charlie worked some magic while Dean figured out how to best piss Sam off enough to pick up the phone. Before, it'd been a kind of combination of apology and Cas praying, but he got the idea that wouldn't happen again. He drank his whiskey and hovered over the buttons on his phone until she came up to him with a mini-USB she said she needed to plug into his phone. He startled awake, looked over. Kevin had an ancient deteriorating set of big stereo headphones on his head, was holding another set for Charlie. There was some kind of interface device between his phone and the big reel to reel - he could have set this up himself if the whole phone thing hadn't been involved. Charlie pressed through some menus on his smart phone, handed it back with a "Magic words, please," and didn't let it go until he'd muttered "thank you."

"Okay, Cas. I want you to pray again, and try to make it feel like we're closing in, like we're close. Not like angry, but like, 'we're close Sam just tell us where you are and we'll come help whatever you're doin.' Got it?"

Cas nodded, closed his eyes. Dean started composing a text.

_Sammy, I got ur trail man. whatever ur up to, its fine but i'm not gonna just let you call us quits. I'm never gonna stop looking for u._

There. Not angry, not pissed, but also guaranteed to piss Sam off enough to pick up the phone when Dean called, just to tell him to shove it. That with the prayer might be enough pressure on him to at least pick up, and hopefully give Dean a clue about where he was.

He pressed send on the text after Cas had opened his eyes. They gave Sam a moment to digest everything, and then he signalled to Kevin and Charlie, sitting at the reel to reel with headphones on, and pressed Call.

It rang twice before Sam picked up.

" _You think you're on my trail, huh?_ " he said without preamble.

"I know I am."

" _I sincerely doubt it. Look I know you're worried, but I'm not having this conversation with you again. I can take care of myself. I'm a better hunter when you're not around - and that's not an insult man, it's just... true. You just keep your distance from me and we'll both be better off."_

Dean gritted his teeth, made a face at the phone, but strangled himself into politeness. "That's not true, Sammy. Now I know you can be a stubborn son of a bitch, but you gotta know I can outlast you in that arena when it comes to making sure you're where I can keep an eye on ya-"

" _Keep an eye on me? Right. Cuz that's always worked out so well for me. Jesus Dean do you even listen to yourself?_ "

"Sam-"

" _No man. I'm not gonna say it again. I'm done. You stay the fuck away from me. The only thing you've ever done for me is drag me back into a life I never wanted and now can't escape, because you're too weak to be alone. You don't know me anymore, you definitely can't_ track _me-"_

"Oh can't I? You think I don't know about your little demon blood problem?" Dean growled, pacing. "You think I can't see a fucking burned patch of ground and recognize that my idiot little brother's gone completely off the rails, _again_? I'm comin' for your ass, man, and you and me are gonna have a nice long fucking heart to heart-"

" _Man you don't know what you're talking about-_ "

"Yeah I fucking do. You must think I'm real dumb, not even bothering to cover your tracks. Your bullshit demon exorcism trail's leadin' me straight to you, Sammy boy-"

There was a fumbling rustle on the other end of the line - Sam, caught off-guard by Dean's accusation. Dean wasn't so far in denial that he could say he'd hoped he was wrong. No, he was right and he knew it, and what really stung was that Sam thought he was too bad a hunter to pick up the trail. Or maybe Sam thought Dean didn't care enough to look. He tried not to take it to heart; kid was high, not thinking straight.

Sam got the phone back, breathed hard a bit, kind of laughing - " _Demon exorcisms,_ " he said. " _Yeah, you got me-_ -" The phone rustled again, in the distance Dean could hear a woman's voice saying " _What a sneaky little-_ " and then the phone clicked off.

Fuck.

The room was silent.

"Did you hear anything?"

And then, from Charlie: "Dean-"

"Did you _hear_ anything?"

Charlie and Kevin looked at each other. Shook their heads. "But we'll listen again, okay? We'll find something," Kevin said.

Dean heaved breaths, anger, despair. The red was clouding him, a vicious acid, and he knew Sam was high, he knew Sam didn't mean the shit he was saying, he knew he knew he knew, but it didn't help.

While Charlie and Kevin and Cas and Crowley listened to the recorded phone call, Dean Winchester beat the shit out of every practice dummy they had in the gym and he drank and drank and drank.

* * *

_**NOW** _

Sam's phone clattered to the floor, stomped into pieces.

 _He'll never find me now,_ he thought. He wouldn't be taking any more of Dean's calls.


	4. Chapter 4

**Episode Seven**  
" **Sanguis Sanctus"  
Chapter Four**

"Dean." Kevin looked around the gym. Dim-lit, smelled old. Dean had beat the shit out of a bunch of stuff, and he was sitting where Kevin had found him once before, bottle in his hand, blood on his knuckles. He crouched.

"Dean. We're gonna find him."

"He don't want found."

"This doesn't sound like Sam, Dean. Does it?"

Dean looked at him then, this burning intense thing, disgust on his face. "You don't know nothin about us, kid."

"I know Sam."

"No you don't. Sam leaves. He always has. Shit gets hard and he bolts."

"But then he comes back. Right? He's always come back."

"How would you know?"

Kevin looked off a moment. He didn't _want_ to know, but- "Charlie told me. She's worried."

"Riiiight," Dean said, vicious smile. "Charlie and those _books_. Well they only tell half the story, believe me. Sam's gone, and he's not comin' back unless we make him."

"So you're gonna make him."

"You think I shouldn't? He's not in any shape to be out there right now, Kevin."

"I know. I'm just. It just doesn't make sense to me. How he could swing from being ready to die for you to walking away like this."

Dean looked off. "Yeah, well. Me and Sam got really high highs and really low lows."

"So you _did_ do something-"

"Just drop it, Kevin. You got a job to do, if I remember correctly. And it ain't gettin' done while you're down here talkin' my ear off."

Kevin watched him, unmoved. "Crowley was begging to help, so he's on listening duty right now. We think it's definitely a warehouse, from the echo patterns. Charlie's setting up a filter to get the voice waveform taken out."

"And you just _had_ to come pester me?"

"I don't think he's run off," Kevin said.

"I'm sorry, were you or were you not listening to that phone call? I got two others just like it. He is _done_. I have been on the _brink_ with this kid for _months_ , and he's just finished."

"Yeah but what if-"

"No code words, Kev. Sorry, kid, I know it's not what you wanted to hear." Dean sighed. His gruff scowl slipped into something more thoughtful. "I know you want to think the best, after he ditched you for a year, that maybe that was just a blip, that he's not that guy. But for all Sam's good points, this _is_ who he is. Especially if he thinks we can get along just fine without him. Which..." He shrugged.

"We can't, though," Kevin said. "He's got _stuff_ to do here. The whole Enoch thing? The John Dee thing?"

"I don't know what to tell ya, Kev. He knows you can figure it out. He knows I can take care of any fuglies. Sam's always been lookin' for a home, and I guess this just isn't it for him."

"How can you say that, knowing you're just gonna drag him back here."

Dean blinked, fast. Kevin felt embarrassingly like he might be tearing up, but the guy was drunk and Sam was basically his only anchor, so. "Because it's true. But I have to make him understand that it doesn't _have_ to be."

Kevin frowned. These guys were screwed up. Like _really_ screwed up. His phone buzzed.

"It's Crowley," he said, reading the text. "He says he heard something."

* * *

"I don't hear anything."

Crowley raised his brows. "Well my delicate shapely demon ears did. I'm telling you, there's a little Moose-squeak in the background of this recording."

Dean blew out a breath. This was a waste of time. "So he stubbed his toe on his way to hanging up on me. So?"

"It sounded more... distant than that."

"Yeah, speakerphone will do that. Tell me something about the _location_ , or I got other stuff to do."

"Other stuff like what?" Kevin challenged.

"Like head out to cow pie country and look into some of these demon sightings."

"Um."

Dean looked up at Kevin. Charlie was there too, looking uneasy. Crowley wouldn't meet his eye. Crowley knew about the demon blood thing, of course. But from the look of it, he hadn't let Kevin and Charlie in on it.

"Got something to say?"

Kevin cleared his throat. Looked at Charlie. "Um," he said. "Just. Sam's exorcising demons, okay. I get that. But um. What's up with the demon blood?" He trailed off a little, rallied. "You just said... demon blood problem, and we were wondering, like. What that meant."

"Is Sam a demon?" Charlie blurted. Then looked shocked at herself. Kevin stared at her, shaking his head vehemently. "I mean he's obviously not, or else holy water and like salt and demon traps and stuff would work on him, but- I'm shutting up now."

Dean closed his eyes, willed himself calm. Just a couple of idiot kids who didn't know their history, didn't really know Sam. If he wasn't careful, he could get Sam back just in time to find out the only people they had didn't trust him anymore, and no chance would Sam stay if that happened. He opened his eyes.

"Don't worry about that just now, okay? We gotta find him, and we can deal with everything else later. Is there _anything_ else on that recording that can give me something to work with?"

Kevin looked at Charlie. They shrugged at each other. Cas was frowning. Crowley sat like a surly teenager.

"Okay then. I'm going to go out looking. Cas, you comin'?"

Cas pressed his lips together a moment, watching the other three, then nodded.

They were on the road in a matter of minutes. Dean kept a go bag in the trunk these days, ever since they'd first gotten a Fed tail and had to camp out in an abandoned house in Nebraska.

"Dean," Cas said. "What are you thinking. About Sam?"

Dean squeezed his anxiety out on the steering wheel a moment. Shook his head. "I don't know. He's exorcising demons. Kevin said maybe he felt guilty about not closing the gates. That could be it. I mean you know Sam. He gets it into his screwed up head that he's gotta do something to make it right, and he doesn't care what it does to _him_ in the process. I mean even _Death_ said-" Dean looked at Cas, who looked clueless. Right. Cas didn't know about Death's little puppet show, how he told Dean Sam would just run off and kill himself to save someone else, how he'd ruin his own soul if there was a greater good involved. Cas didn't know shit.

Cas looked out front. "Sam does have that characteristic in him. He always has. It was one of the reasons the great war hinged on him. But we underestimated him."

Now was not the time to bring up the panic room. Not the time not the time- "Yeah well. That's what I'm here for, I guess."

"To keep him from doing that," Cas guessed.

"Yeah. Listen, Cas. What you said. About not trusting me with Sam or whatever. That's bullshit, and you gotta know it. I would never intentionally-"

"Dean. What's in the past is unchangeable. We've all hurt Sam. Sam has hurt us. That's what we _do_ -"

"Well look at the newly human guy-"

"Humans and angels - all creatures who can decide for themselves how to treat each other. We screw up. Maybe we do it out of love, but that doesn't excuse it."

"Who's trying to? You know what. I'm done with this conversation. You wanna believe I don't know just exactly how I've screwed up with Sam? You honestly think I don't go over every moment of that kid's life and how I failed him? I do. And you of all people do _not_ get to tell me you're worried about _me_ with him, okay? Mr... _Abomination._ Boy with the demon blood? Oh hold on, lemme just crack your head open for kicks? Oh sure, you're all hearts on your notebook for Sam now but maybe you forgot a few things, huh?"

Cas was quiet, watched out the window as the scenery sped by. Dean didn't care. Because fuck Cas, okay? Cas could suck it.

* * *

Kevin turned to Crowley as soon as the door had closed. "Okay, we're going to Pennsylvania."

Crowley raised his brows. "What?"

"You heard me. Somethin' stinks about this, and I'm gonna find out what."

Charlie scoffed. "Have you ever actually been on a hunt before?"

"Yes. Obviously. Kind of. I've witnessed them. Look, Sam isn't ditching us, I know it."

"I wanna believe that too." Charlie shrugged. "I do. But Dean's looking, and he knows Sam better than any of us-"

"That's the problem," Kevin said. "He's too close to this. He's got too much baggage. I don't know if you've noticed, but he treats Sam like a kid. It's like he's totally forgotten Sam saved the _planet_ from being roasted-"

"Only because Dean was there-"

"You have to stop reading those books," Kevin said. "Look, I know it's tempting, but they're clearly biased. You can't possibly know the whole story if you think Sam only saved the world because Dean was there. And do you even know what happened after?"

"Uh. They kept hunting monsters? There isn't anything published after Swan Song."

"You don't wonder even a little how he's still here after the way the last book ends?"

Charlie quirked a brow. "Uh, well obviously Edlund took liberties. It's not like Sam _literally_ dove into _Hell_. Right?"

Kevin and Crowley looked at her.

" _Right_?"

"Um."

"Holy jeez. No way."

Kevin rolled his eyes. "My point is, Sam isn't what Dean has as this... image of him, and it's getting in the way of him being able to see Sam for what he really is. And there's no way he'd just run out on us like this! There's no way he would just _leave_ this _family-_ "

Kevin stopped. Breathed hard.

Charlie bit her lip and glanced at Crowley. "Holy daddy issues," she muttered, and Kevin took a deep, calming breath. God, whatever heavenly crap was in him giving him the prophety goodness, grant him the Serenity and all her crew-

" _Anyway_ ," Crowley said, coming to his rescue. "Mini Moose has a point. This isn't like Sam."

"I wanna go check out the place where Sam and Dean were hunting before Sam disappeared." He turned to Crowley. "You're gonna take me."

"Sure, I suppose I could lend a-"

"You're only alive because of Sam. Damned right you're lending a hand."

"Okay okay. Sheesh."

"What should I do?" Charlie said. "Um, I just got back from a hunt with them, and I love Sam, I do, but maybe there's something nice and homey I can do from here?"

"Sure," Kevin said. "You can be like, our hub. We'll like, call in and ask you to run searches and stuff. That's a thing that happens, right?"

Charlie shrugged. "Probably."

"Okay."

The three of them looked at each other.

"Go team?" Kevin said.

"Right, right," Charlie said. "I'll just-"

"Why don't I go pack up some spell supplies," Crowley said over her, and Kevin rolled his eyes as they disappeared to their tasks.

* * *

Lincoln, Pennsylvania was a shithole. Tiny, kinda rundown. They appeared in the parking lot of the only motel in town, the Lincoln Logs. Cute. Kevin got them a room with Sam's emergency credit card with promises to pay him back, possibly with a rescue, and while he'd have _vastly_ preferred a room of his own, there wasn't any sense in getting a room for Crowley when they were supposed to be working a case together and Crowley didn't even sleep.

Kevin dropped his bag on one of the beds and pulled out his laptop. Crowley strolled around the tiny room, appraising the wallpaper.

"So what first, oh mighty hunter?"

Kevin glared at Crowley. "Well. I have the casefiles on what they were hunting here. But Dean also said Sam got into a fight of some kind, had to make a police report. I wanna read that."

"You don't think it's more likely that Sam came into contact with whatever it was they were hunting? If it was a shapeshifter, it could sound like Sam."

Kevin shrugged. "Let's just get all the information first. Then we can spin theories."

"Okay. So how do you intend to get the file? Don't suppose you got yourself a fake ID?"

"Yeah right. It's the 21st century. I'm gonna hack their database." He gestured to his laptop with a grin. "Maybe you should go get us some dinner."

"I get it. I'm the driver, the gopher, the hired hand. Well I care about Moose too. And you _might_ remember I'm something of a decent mastermind?"

"Oh I remember. But I'm hungry, and you can't hack their database. So right now, I got a job and you got a job, and maybe when we find something _you_ can do, if such a thing _exists_ , I'll go get the take-out."

Crowley grumbled, but then he vanished and Kevin was alone. It took him a little time on the motel's crappy wifi, muddling through the police station's firewall. But he did get the report, simplified as it was.

Agent Sam Carter, blahblah. Woman in red named Natalie Smith. He texted the woman's social and name to Charlie to get her working on that. Sam's description of the event was detailed; he'd known Sam was maybe more precise than he needed to be, but clearly a lifetime of hunting had him way over-leveled for this hunt. He described the bad boyfriend as a dude about 6'1, 240 pounds, wearing a black hoodie jacket over a red tee shirt, jeans, boots. He wore a silver ring with a complicated crest on it, which Sam also gave a lot of detail for. But his face was in shadow, so he didn't have a good description. Said the guy was chasing Natalie, so Sam stepped in, got hit in the face, there was a note in the file that a paramedic escorting an injured perp was on premises and as a professional courtesy, did up two stitches on the agent's jaw.

Kevin sighed and made notes about everything, just in case. He was hoping for some obvious clue, but then, if Sam had noticed something off that night, he'd have mentioned it to Dean. He stretched and glanced at his phone for the time. Frowned. Crowley should have been back with food by now.

_hey, you don't have to eat, but i do. do they have to butcher the cow or what?_

A couple of minutes later, his phone buzzed.

_omw pocket prophet. don't get all huffy, you'll get worry lines. no boy likes a prophet with worry lines._

Kevin made a face at his phone, went back to the laptop to make more notes. Natalie's report matched Sam's, although she was able to just give them her boyfriend's name and address and didn't bother with a physical description. Kevin noted them down, made it a point to visit this Frederick guy.

And then Crowley appeared in the room.

Kevin jumped. "Jesus you can't just show up like that."

Crowley raised his brows, turned to the door. Knocked. "Hallo? I'm home."

"You could at least pretend to be a person."

"What. Show up outside the door? A block away maybe? Walk up and knock? Wait for you to open the door? It's my room too ya know. I could just come right in."

"You don't have a key."

"Which isn't very fair if you ask me."

"You don't _need_ a key."

"Hence, the teleportation. Veggie burger and fries, right?" Crowley held out a bag.

Kevin looked at it from the side. "We're in the middle of meat country. Where'd you get that?"

"This neat little place in New York City. You'd love it."

"Thank you?"

"You're welcome. And you're welcome again."

"For what?"

"I went by the police station."

"What, as Agent British Guy?"

"Sure."

"Okay...? So did you find anything out?"

"I sure did. Eat up. Sam'll have my head if you waste away."

Kevin looked off, annoyed. But he unwrapped the thing, pulled out the fries and the ketchup packets. It smelled amazing. He needed to get Dean the recipe, because for all his faults, Dean cooked if there was food in the house, and this? Heck, Sam might even be able to eat it.

"Okay," he said around a bite. "Happy? So what's the big news?"

Crowley watched him a moment. Then he said, "Our chief suspect Detective Warner was transferred. The day after he talked to Dean."

* * *

Long River, Iowa had the feel of a town that had suffered a long depression, newly invigorated by some influx of cash, and asking around at the local diner, quick conversation, light and easy, revealed that some church had come through, donated some money for a large home outside of town. A shelter of sorts, runaways, homeless, the socially defeated. And at first the community had rebelled, because who wanted that element? But it turned out that they were just normal people, people who wanted jobs and made and spent money, and required services, which drove up business, created opportunity for new businesses, and so on and so on-

Basically, it was a town prospering in the fashion of the new American Dream or whatever.

Before even checking into the local motel, Dean and Cas found the scene of the exorcism. It was just like it looked in the picture. Burnt black around the edges, crisped matter inside the circle. Sam had killed demons before, and all it left was a body. But this? This was definitely exorcism, black smoke pouring out of the host into the ground, burning through on its way back down into the Pit. If Dean could find a host, he could maybe try to get at a memory of the fight between Sam and the demon, before it was exorcised. Maybe Sam had been the one to get the host to the hospital afterward. He looked around the scene. Sam had been here. He had to have left some kinda clue.

But it was just an alleyway, dirty, dark. There wasn't even a sign of struggle, but it'd been a week since this particular exorcism, and the evidence was probably long gone.

"Dammit."

Cas stood a bit away, examining another part of the scene. "I don't see anything of use," he called.

"Me neither. Let's stay in town a night, see if we can get in touch with the victim. He or she might remember something."

Dean didn't have a laptop. He usually had Sam for this stuff. And he could find out easily enough without a computer but it'd take time, so instead, he called Kevin.

Who wasn't at the bunker.

"What do you mean, you went out lookin' for Sam. In case you didn't notice, that's my job."

" _I'm following another lead. But Charlie's working the bunker. Call her."_

Dean hung up on the kid. Called Charlie and basically yelled an order at her and then slammed himself into a chair in the motel room.

He looked at Cas. "What."

Cas frowned.

" _What?_ "

"You're angry at Sam."

"Damn right I'm angry. He knows better than to get mixed up in this stuff again. I never shoulda just let him do it. And what's the point? You know? There's no greater... whatever."

"Now that he's just drinking to make himself feel well again, it's unforgivable?"

Dean rested his forehead on his hands, elbows on his knees. "It's always been unforgivable, Cas. Do you think - maybe he's trying to-"

Cas sat at the foot of one of the beds. "What?"

"With the phone calls, the things he's sayin', do you think he's... just done? Trying to get me to hate him so I'll just leave him alone to..." God, he couldn't say it. Fuck, if that was the situation- What was he supposed to do then? What was he supposed to do with a brother who couldn't remember how to live? What good was that whole deal with Death if Dean couldn't figure this out? Of course, everything Sam was saying about Dean on the phone was true, so it could still just be Sam being a dick.

"Dean."

Dean looked up.

"Sam knows you could never hate him."

Dean stared. Was that true? Was that true? After the dungeon, after the things that strange not-Sam had said when both of them had believed the real Sam had left the building? He couldn't trust Dean, not deep down. And he didn't have Dean's trust. The number of times he had begged for it, and Dean had withheld it, because dammit, things always went south, things always went wrong, and the times Sam had asked Dean to trust him, it was just always always when the consequences for being wrong, and sometimes for being right, were that Sammy died. The risk was too great.

"You hungry? I'm starvin. Why don't you go out and get us some grub. You know how to do that, right?"

"I have been shopping with Kevin several times. But Dean."

"What."

Cas watched him a moment, frowned. "Nevermind. I'll be back."

Cas left with a quiet click of the door closing. Dean shook his head, got up to grab a beer. He spread a map out across the table, a map of the town they were in, looking for structures that could fit the description Kevin had given him. A warehouse, a factory floor maybe, definitely two stories in height, a big open space. There wasn't anything like that in this town.

But that was fine. There were thirteen other dispossessions he planned to investigate. They didn't make a pattern, but there was bound to be some bit of evidence, some shred of remembered horror in a host's mind that could shed some light on things. His phone lit up.

_Your vic's home address, milord?_

Dean grinned. _thx kid._

When Cas got back with grub, they'd head out to talk to this Trent guy, see if they could shake any memories loose of Sam.

* * *

Trent was drunk, or high. Either way, he wasn't making any sense at all.

"Slow down, buddy," Dean said, ushering him to the couch. "Just tell us whatever you can remember. It might sound unbelievable, but I promise, we'll listen."

Trent sat with a flump onto his couch, head thrown back, hand in the air. "Maaaan no way I can't. It's like entire parts of my life don't exist maaaan."

"Like you were possessed?"

"Yeah! Yeah yeah like that, yeah."

Dean looked at Cas; Cas looked back at him and for once it was like they were on the same page. This guy was like two inches from useless. Dean sighed, sat in a chair across from him.

"Okay, I need you to focus, Trent. When you came out of this... possessed feeling. Was there a guy there? Maybe he took you to the hospital?"

Trent looked at him, turned his head and frowned and watched him from the corner of his eye, a paranoid smoker, just Dean's luck. "No man."

"Seriously. He's not in any trouble. We just wanna talk to him."

"I'm telling you, I didn't see nobody. Just woke up on the ground."

"And wandered to the hospital by yourself?"

"Well." He looked from Dean to Cas and back. "No. Some guy showed up."

"Tall? Brown hair. Maybe look like this?" Dean pulled out a photo of Sam - he didn't have anything newer than Sam at 22 or so, and Sam hardly looked like that anymore, but maybe it'd jog the guy's memory.

Trent peered at the photo, took it and poured over it, blinked hard and twisted his head to look at it from an angle, then handed it back.

"Nope, not him. Sorry dudes. Agent dudes," he corrected. "Agents. Dude agents." He saluted, for good measure.

Dean rolled his eyes and got up. "Thanks for nothin'," he said, stalking toward the door.

"Dean," Cas said out on the sidewalk. "If Sam didn't help this man to the hospital-"

"He's just exorcising demons and leaving the hosts? Man. Somethin' about this stinks, and it ain't that guy's living room."

"Hey man!" called Trent from his front door. "You don't wanna know about the vampire chick?"

Dean raised his brows at Cas. Turned on his heel. "The what?"


	5. Chapter 5

**Episode Seven**  
" **Sanguis Sanctus"  
Chapter Five**

"Okay, so Detective Warner gets transferred the day after he talks to Dean. It's a little crazy to think that's a coincidence, right?" Kevin said.

Crowley shrugged, grinned bright. "No such thing when it comes to these boys. So what're we thinking, Scooby? Warner's the bad guy?"

"He wasn't there when Sam went to talk to him the night before he vanished. He told Dean he had a family emergency."

"Again with the coincidences."

"And then even though it says he transferred the day after Dean talked to him, he took the afternoon off the day Sam went missing."

Crowley shook his head. "Well if he _is_ the bad guy, he's no criminal mastermind. If Sam hadn't called Dean to say he wasn't coming back, this guy would be the first person on the rack."

Kevin ate his burger absent-mindedly. "Okay. So this cop's involved. Maybe Sam was right thinking Warner was keeping the real Feds off the case. Maybe Sam got too close and Warner had to take him out."

"Why not just kill him?"

"Um. Maybe because no one wants Dean Winchester on their ass?"

"Good point."

"Okay. I'm gonna have Charlie run down this Frank Warner guy. Tomorrow, we oughta follow Sam's footsteps." He tapped the notebook. "Every person Sam was due to interview that morning."

"Got a working theory?"

"Do you?" Kevin put his burger down, scowled. "I thought you were here for your brains."

"Half a brain, remember?"

"Well?"

Crowley looked off. Pressed his lips together. "If Sam's been taken, as you say, how can there be sightings of him, the ones Deano's looking into?"

Kevin shrugged. "A shapeshifter maybe-"

"Kev." Crowley looked uncomfortable. "There's more to those sightings than Dean wants us to know about, but I happen to know - they couldn't have been a shapeshifter. Had to have been Sam."

Kevin frowned. "And you were gonna say something, when?"

"When I had to. It's a matter of Sam's personal private business, and you know how fussy he gets when it comes to his privacy."

"And you know this... how?"

Crowley opened his mouth to answer.

Kevin put a hand up. "Wait. Do I want to know? Do I _need_ to know?"

"I dunno. Do you? It's probably in those books somewhere."

"Is it important to the case?"

"It could be."

Kevin looked at his laptop, unhappy. On the one hand, Sam's privacy had been something Kevin defended, especially once it was clear that Sam was dealing with serious, heavy stuff and had been for a long time. Being crazy, having suffered the way he had, tortured - stuff Sam didn't need other people knowing about unless he told them.

But on the other hand, Dead Sam didn't care about his privacy, right?

"Okay. How do you know it could _only_ have been Sam? The abridged version, okay?"

Crowley nodded, serious as Kevin had ever seen him. He took Sam's stuff personally too, Kevin remembered. He was practically a worshipper at the Church of Sam.

"I have it on good authority," he said cagily, like he was picking and choosing how to tell Kevin without _telling_ Kevin, "that those sightings of Moose are actually the sites of a certain kind of exorcism that only Moose can do. You remember he was briefly psychic?"

Kevin nodded. "Charlie mentioned."

"Well. This is a thing he can do. _Only_ him."

"If he can do some super special exorcism, why doesn't he do it all the time?"

"Squirrel frowns on it," Crowley said. "It's psychic, therefore it's not natural, and anything supernatural has to go down."

Kevin made a face. "Practically everyone we work with is supernatural in some way. I mean, I'm a prophet. You're the king of hell-"

"Bad example, Deano's not my biggest fan, but I see your point." He shrugged. "Guess it's different when it's Sam. Anyway, Sam doesn't do it anymore. Until now, I guess."

Kevin slumped in his chair. If those sightings really were Sam, then what was he even hoping to find here? "I don't want to give up."

"Me neither."

"I still think something doesn't add up here."

"Me too."

"I mean why would he take everything from the motel room but then leave the car for Dean at the last interviewee's house?"

"I don't know."

"So we're staying to check this out."

"I'm with you."

"Okay." Kevin nodded. Then he frowned at Crowley. "Stop agreeing with me. It's creepin' me out."

* * *

"Hey man!" called Trent from his front door. "You don't wanna know about the vampire chick?"

Dean raised his brows at Cas. Turned on his heel. "The what?"

"The vampire chick. Isn't that what you wanted to ask this guy about?"

Dean looked around, up and down the street. Heaved a breath, came back up to the guy's front door. "What about a vampire chick?"

"Okay, so I woke up, right, and she was there, and she was like, _right_ there. Talking to me like, scared. And then she looked pissed like, she knew who I was but I didn't know who she was, and then she was like-"

"Why do you think she was a vampire chick?"

"She wanted my blood, man."

Dean rolled his eyes. So, _vampire chick_ was probably the bitch on the phone, maybe not a demon herself, but running out for demon blood take-out for Sam. Maybe she was another hunter. Either way.

"Know where she went?"

"No man. I didn't want to. She had like, vampire eyes. And vampire teeth."

O... kay, so maybe not another hunter. And probably not an actual vampire either, considering this guy wouldn't know a real one if it bit him on the neck. But she was something.

Great. Leave it to Sam to shack up with a monster. Again.

* * *

Kevin sat at the table in their motel room and stared at the notebook, willing the puzzle pieces to come into focus.

"What if they're all in on it together?"

"That's a theory," Crowley acknowledged.

"Why do you want to believe so bad that Sam just ditched us?"

"I don't. I just want to make sure we're following the right trail here, biscuit. For your theory to work, someone's got to have been watching Moose the whole time, they'd have had to be waiting wherever they thought they could get him alone, had another conspirator in easy distance, two bodies who weren't out of place in the neighborhood. All in the time it took for Harriet Housewife back there to wash her face and come out of her house."

"That's not such a long leap, if someone has resources."

"Well it's not demons. I'd have heard about it."

Kevin held his breath a moment in thought. "Okay. Go with me here. Sam and Dean are investigating these murders. None of the arcane markings make sense with any one monster, the organs that got harvested weren't the same for each victim... Are you seeing where I'm going?"

Crowley raised a brow. "I think so, but I'd like to hear you talk a little more about organ harvesting. Very stimulating. To my... thought process. Go on."

Kevin rolled his eyes. "So, what if it's like, a bunch of different monsters who all need something different from the victims, and they kinda... pool their resources. Fewer victims, the police are baffled and write the multiple murders off as copy cats, the Feds don't get involved. Hunters who pick up the trail are confused because they can't pin down any one monster."

"A monster coalition."

"Yeah." Kevin shrugged. "Is it possible?"

"Maybe. Let's see the police files again."

Kevin shoved them to Crowley and pulled his buzzing phone out of his pocket. "Hey Charlie. Got anything for me?"

" _Wow, you totally sound like a pro._ "

"Shut up."

" _Roger, Agent. Okay, so Natalie Smith exists, as in she's a person. But she hasn't been seen in months. She had some problems with the police, ran off. They haven't been looking too hard for her._ "

"And this Frederick guy?"

" _He also exists, theoretically. But no one I've called can confirm they've actually seen him go in and out of his apartment and his landlord isn't picking up._ "

Kevin frowned.

"Okay, thanks. I'll call you if I need anything else."

They hung up and Kevin tried to relax, get into tablet-mode. He'd been getting good at it, a sort of zen space where the symbols arranged themselves into some kinda sense. He sorted through the files, the images - something that helped him focus was writing, drawing symbols. Before he'd really realized what he was doing, he had half a page of symbols gleaned from the photographs of the bodies. No wonder Sam and Dean had hit a dead end with them; they didn't seem to have anything in common except maybe... the idea of holiness. But that was half the symbols out there when you boiled them down, so.

Holiness, or purity, or like... kingliness. Rulership. Or leadership? Salvation? Well, either way, he buckled down and copied the rest of the symbols onto his page with more intention, letting himself drift into it. Even without the tablet, it seemed like he'd gotten the hang of getting into that kind of heaven-headspace. Too soon, the symbols were done, littered across his page dense, twice over, and he frowned. Pulled over Sam's statement of the night before he went missing, and started to reconstruct the ring he saw on the guy Frederick's finger.

When he was done, he looked at it. Stared. Nothing about it made sense. He turned it upside down-

"Holy crap."

He recognized some of the symbols from the demon tablet. They didn't make sense in context and maybe the guy was just some kind of occult fanatic who had no idea his symbols were real, but still-

"Hey. Does this mean anything to you?" He turned his notebook around and shoved it at Crowley.

Crowley looked at it for a long moment, blinking in what Kevin thought was confusion. He turned it around, sideways, tilted his head, blocked out parts of it with his thumb, blocked out other parts, squinted at it, for so long and so comedically that Kevin blew out a frustrated breath and reached to take it back, fuck off Crowley, you don't have to be an ass about it, but then Crowley said:

"Um. This isn't - it doesn't make sense."

"What?"

"This is Lucifer's bloody symbol, but the rest of the thing doesn't make any sense. It's like someone who doesn't speak infernal tongues has tried to reconstruct something out of whatever they read in a book."

"So like, this guy's just an occult weirdo who found a bunch of stuff to threw it together so he could look cool?"

Crowley looked doubtful. "Probably."

"Probably? What else could it be?"

"I'm not sure."

"What if Warner's the wrong direction? What if the guy Sam ran into that night with this ring is actually the thing they were hunting?"

Crowley frowned at Kevin in thought. "The boys get a little too close, and when they split up, the bad guy goes after Sam how? By staging a little domestic?"

"They were both in on it, maybe?"

"She made a police report and everything, gave them her boyfriend's real name."

"A boyfriend no one can confirm having seen in weeks. What if they were establishing identities to stay under hunter radar?"

"And just happened to start carving up bodies in the most gratuitously hunter-catnip way possible?"

Kevin shrugged. "Maybe they couldn't help themselves."

Crowley made a face.

"Well what's your theory?" Kevin demanded.

Crowley pressed his lips together.

"You don't have one, do you. You think he's gone off, left us."

"Don't get bothered, darling-"

"I thought you agreed with me. Why did you even come-"

"And let you go off hunting on your lonesome?"

" _That's_ why you came?"

"No. No, it's not," Crowley said, serious. "If you're right, then of course we need to do whatever we can to find Sam and bring him home. _If_ you're right, I want to help. I just happen to think it's a biggish _if_."

Kevin closed his eyes a long moment. Strangling Crowley in a broiling blood rage wouldn't help anyone. And he probably couldn't do that anyway. Breathe deep, Tran. In and out.

"Say Sam hasn't just up and left us," he said. "You aren't helping him by just thinking up ways I'm wrong about it, are you? So come up with some theories about what could really be going on here, or go home."

Crowley gazed at the floor, mouth moving in chastised thought.

"Well? Are you with me?"

Crowley nodded, didn't meet his eye. "Yeah, yeah I'm with you." He looked up. "Of course I'm with you."

"So give me a theory."

Crowley chuckled. "Let's see. Deadly Duo stalk Sam and attempt to take him out, but Sam manages to run them off one-handed-"

"He runs the guy off."

"Right, right. Takes the lady to the police station where she makes a full report-" He stopped, made a face. "I suppose if she were trying to make applesauce out of rotten apples-"

"That's not a thing-"

"They went after Sam, but failed. She might present it as a domestic, give out her man's real name and address for some realism. They've had these personae for a while, so she knows it'll check out, at least on the surface. They wait for the next time Sam's alone and this time, manage to take him out." Crowley frowned. "Why not just kill him and deliver him to Dean to gloat? Why not use him to lure Dean to a location where they can kill him as well?"

Kevin was nodding. "And why stage these exorcisms only Sam can apparently do? Why fake phone calls? _How_ \- Oh my god, is there such a thing as mind control?"

Crowley raised a brow. "Theoretically, Abaddon could- but Sam's tattoo protects against that."

"Unless they removed it."

"I don't think it's Abaddon."

"What if she's taking out demons who don't side with her."

"Hang on-"

"What if-"

"Okay. I'm not trying to contradict you here, but we're getting a little far afield. What's the connection between whatever these monsters are and Abaddon? She isn't usually one for using lesser creatures to do her dirty work. She'd have shown up in a swirl of over-dramatic smoke and done it all herself. Sam would have never gotten away the first time if she was involved."

"You don't know that. Sam's taken care of her before."

"Oh I know," Crowley agreed. "But he's not quite the focused little drone he was then. He's running on fumes these days, even moreso than in that church."

"So then what?"

"Honestly? I don't know."

"Okay," Kevin said, standing. He reached for his bag, started shoving things into it. "I'm gonna go talk to the witness."

"Gives me chills when you talk like you know what you're doing, really."

* * *

There weren't any signs of monster activity in the area. No missing people or pets, no strange deaths. They'd have never come to this town if it weren't for the strange burnt out marks in the ground that meant demon exorcism. But there was nothing here, just a tiny town surrounded by cornfields.

But Dean was nothing if not thorough, so before striking out for the next site of demon exorcism, he and Cas blanketed the little town with questions. But of course, the vampire chick had probably left with Sam, and Sam wasn't likely to have allowed her to snack, so it wasn't surprising that they didn't find any reports of strange activity in the area.

That was one thing, at least. Sam shacking up with another monster chick meant one more monster who wasn't going to be acting on her urges. Sam might have been way off the reservation, but he was still _Sam_.

Still, they asked around. The demon had been here for a reason, Sam and vamp chick had been here for demon blood, the demon must have been doing something to draw attention to itself - something didn't add up.

Dean sighed and slammed himself back into the chair at the motel room table, throwing his head back. This shit was frustrating.

"You're frustrated."

Dean looked up. "Always perceptive."

"You've tracked Sam before."

"There weren't any reports of stolen cars leaving Lincoln. He isn't using any of his aliases. His GPS is turned off. Charlie said when she tried to hack the system to turn it on remotely, he'd had some kinda security thing put on preventing external apps from accessing his phone or something, I don't know. She was workin' on it, but that doesn't even matter now because apparently his phone is completely off." Dean took a drink from his beer, aware he was rambling. He glanced at Cas and away.

"You aren't telling me something."

"You're getting good."

"Dean. Please. If it's about Sam-"

"No, it's not about _Sam_." Not really, anyway. But it was clear now that Sam had been clued in on Dean's little deal with Abaddon by someone who vamoosed him right out of there on the spot, no stolen car required.

Cas didn't need to know about Abaddon, but-

"Sam's runnin' around with someone, right? Someone who can vanish him around from place to place."

"Yes?"

"But it can't be this so-called vampire chick, because no monster can do that, can they?"

Cas frowned. "A demon who didn't want Sam to drink from her for some reason?"

"So Sam and vamp-chick and/or demon-prude hunt down this Trent guy for some go-juice for Sammy-"

"And once they have it, Sam exorcises the demon and they leave." Cas looked troubled.

"Yeah. I guess."

"But Trent didn't see Sam, only this woman."

Dean studied the tabletop, shook his head. "I don't know, man. Maybe there'll be something at the next place."

Cas nodded, started to take off his jacket.

"No, no, leave it on. I wanna get out of here asap."

"Dean, we drove all morning, we've searched all day. Shouldn't we-"

"We aren't stopping until I find Sammy, and that's final. You wanna go home, catch a bus. I'll buy you the ticket."

Cas frowned. "No, I'm with you. Of course I'm with you."

He looked dead on his feet, but it didn't matter. Dean was going to find Sam. No matter what.

They were on the road ten minutes later. On the road and on their way out of town to New Junction, South Dakota - no rhyme or reason other than it was the next most recent sighting. There was no pattern, there was no driving distance logic at play, because when a demon was your co-pilot, you didn't care about shit like that.

It was eight in the evening. Another hunt, they'd have stayed and headed out the next day, but this wasn't another hunt. So with the late evening summer sun in his eyes, Dean eased them out, speeding along the backroads beside the muddied fields. He tried not to see Sam in these half grown stalks, cornsilk or wheat, green and growing, reaching for sun and destined for a great height, destined for something, warm and tan and of the earth, working hands and summer heat.

"I miss him," Cas said.

Dean looked over, lowered his brows. "Aw come on, don't-"

"I worry about him."

"Cas, you can't just - you don't just _say_ -"

"Maybe you should."

Dean swung his gaze back to the road, rolled his eyes in disgust. Guy didn't have the first clue how to be human-

What the _fuck-_

He pulled over, staring at an electrical pole on the side of the road.

"I didn't mean _now_ ," Cas said.

"Shut up." Dean watched the pole as he got out of the car. Looked around. A couple of houses dotted the flat landscape. At the top of a hill-ish not-really-a-hill, a big big house, and Dean remembered the sort of halfway house the town was so proud of, and he put his fingers on the strange symbol carved into the pole. "What the-" He couldn't recognize it. Maybe it was hobo markings. But it looked demonic, it _looked_ like the way Hell felt, and he knew how Hell felt. This thing spoke in his bones.

"Cas-"

Cas was already at his shoulder, shaking his head. "It's infernal. But it doesn't mean anything."

Dean frowned. Took out his phone and said a quick prayer. He wasn't good at the whole texting pictures of shit thing, but he thought maybe Charlie could do some research.

* * *

Kevin turned from the sidewalk up the path to the Hopkins' front door, fiddled with his tie. It was a cheap thing - he hadn't worn a suit of any kind in like two years and it was itchier than he remembered. But he wasn't that nervous cello player anymore. He felt taller, on a mission. And this was the last place anyone had seen Sam before that first phone call saying he wasn't coming home for a few days. Crowley was at his elbow, looking nervous.

"Calm down," Kevin said.

"Oh I'm calm. This is baseline paranoia, pocket pet. How do you think I've stayed alive all this time?"

"I figured it was the cockroach DNA," Kevin said, and knocked on the door.

"You wound me," Crowley muttered as the door opened.

"Mrs. Hopkins?" Kevin said. "We're from the Bureau, um, looking into, uh, following up on a-"

"You spoke with Agent Carter a couple of weeks ago," Crowley said. "Well, Agent Carter's gone missing since then."

The woman looked stunned. "Missing?"

Kevin refrained from kicking Crowley. He thought there was supposed to be an element of obfuscation with this kinda stuff. And Crowley just comes right out and says the thing. Gawd. "You're the last one to have seen him, far as we can figure," he said. "Can you tell us-"

"Come in, come in."

Kevin looked around her living room briefly, trying to figure out what Sam would have made note of, what he might have picked out as clues for the case they'd been trying to solve here.

"Like I said. You're the last one to have seen him."

"I thought it was odd, but I called the number on the card he gave me and he told me he had to go unexpectedly."

"So he just left."

Mrs. Hopkins nodded. "He'd just asked if I'd like to come out to lunch with him, um, continue our interview. I. I think he was being kind. I haven't." She pressed her lips together and glanced up at the mantel, where pictures of her daughter were still displayed. Kevin frowned.

"Sounds like something Sam would do," he said and smiled a little at her.

She collected herself, then smiled back. "A neighbor said she saw something, just before I came outside to meet up with him. I just remembered it. She said she hadn't seen the man I was asking about, because someone had collapsed on the sidewalk and Laura Whitt and Stan Gill rushed him to the hospital in Laura's van." She thought for a moment. "But Stan's been on vacation, he just got back. She was probably mistaken-"

"You're just now thinking that was odd?" Crowley asked.

"Well, I did call Agent Carter's number when I didn't see him waiting. We talked. That was before Missy told me someone had collapsed and been rushed away. I assumed he was fine. And then his partner came and got his car later that day. I suppose it's possible he wasn't seriously ill and just didn't want to worry me..."

Kevin frowned. Made some notes in his notepad. "Okay. Um." He looked at Crowley. "I think that's all we need for now?" Crowley nodded just a little. "Let me give you my number in case you think of something else that seems odd, okay?"

"Okay. What are you thinking happened? Do you think - the same people who killed my Emily-?"

"We don't know."

"Well I hope you find him," she said. "He was so understanding. I got the idea he knew what it was like to lose someone."

Kevin nodded. God, understatement. He turned to go. This was a bust. No, no strange men, no strange women, no strange behavior from Emily or her friends, no recognition of the symbols-

"Hang on. What about this-" He shoved most of what he was carrying into Crowley's arms and shuffled through his notebook for the image of the ring he'd recreated from Sam's report. "Have you seen this design anywhere?"

She took it from him, turned it upside down and back. Kevin thought he saw a kind of confused recognition, and then the light dawned-

"That's - it's his class ring." She looked up. "The detective I spoke with, the lead on Emily's case. That's his ring."

Kevin went cold.

* * *

"Where'd you get this?" Charlie said, goggling at Kevin's drawing.

"The guy who tangled with Sam the night before he went missing was wearing this ring. Sam described it in his statement. But-"

Charlie shoved a printout at him. "Check it out."

Kevin frowned. "Where'd you get this?"

"Dean texted it to me."

"Holy crap."

"Yeah."

"Okay, well there's more. This ring was ID'd by the mother of the last victim as a ring the _detective_ was wearing."

That, she looked up at. "Holy wow. The detective who mysteriously wasn't in the office when Sam was getting punched. That explains that. So."

"So, it was a trap? To grab a hunter? I mean it's off Fed radar, but it's weird enough a hunter would show up to check it out. They try to grab Sam that night but fail to overpower him. I guess they succeeded at the Hopkins' house?"

Charlie frowned. "Holy wow. Okay, so to add even more weird, I started digging into this symbol-"

Kevin dropped into a chair. "I know, there's nothing. I think the guy made it up-"

"There's not nothing. It's just that the only places you can find it are private forums. You can tell if there's a protected entry if you use a cached search function from this labs extension I happen to have-" She winked at him. "I happen to know the chick who wrote it."

"Know her, or _know_ her?"

She just grinned and waggled her head a little, smug. "Anyway, a little hacking here, a little more or less legal snooping there, and yahtzee, I found matches, lots of matches, all over the country. Check it out." She tapped a few keys, then turned the screen to him.

Pictures, of fields with big canvas event tents, the symbol here and there, posts from users. The posts themselves were still cryptic, like even though they were posting in super sekrit forums, they were still paranoid. Well, okay. Point taken. But anyway.

"Okay, so what are we looking at?"

"I dunno. But these tents pop up all over the place. And look." She pulled the laptop back and alt-tabbed to a map with overlays. "The red are those demon/Sam sightings. The blue are those tents."

"There's a tent sighting everywhere there's a Sam sighting," Kevin said. "There's a lot more tents though."

"Yeah. _And_ , I think I got the location of the next tent sighting from one of these super vague and unhelpful posts."

"You did? Well what are we waiting for?"

"Nothing," Charlie said, kicking back with a grin. "I texted Dean the address just before you showed up."

"Text him again."

"What? But-"

"Charlie, this is a _cult_."

* * *

Dean stood at the edge of the field in which the tent had been erected and put his phone on silent. It was seven am. It'd rained overnight again, in this dry dusty summer, and now he understood how the crops were growing so well when the rest of the country was in drought.

He'd watched them from a distance. The town had been quiet, no monster signs, no strange deaths. Monsters on best behavior. Because their fucking leader was coming.

It was a fucking _cult._

 _Sam_. What are you doing, Sam? Dean had seen a family of ghouls, still wearing whoever they'd last eaten, tramp into the tent in their best clothes. A vampire clan. An old rugaru. Dozens of them.

The blood in him sang for their necks. Purgatory vibrated in his bones.

But he waited, he waited.

 _Sam. Sammy._ What are you doing, Sam? Even with Dean breathing down his neck, he hadn't been able to help himself. There were two more exorcisms since Sam had hung up on him the last time, and half a dozen more false-starts that didn't end in exorcism, just the singe of a circle's edge before Sam had gotten spooked and quit.

Leading a trail right to him. Of course, Sam wouldn't have known they'd find out about that symbol. And now it was clear the monsters had told Sam about Abaddon, recruited him to their cause, whatever that was, and although their first altercation had gone really wrong, their second hadn't, and-

Leading a trail right to him, right to him, Dean frowned. So sloppy, Sammy. Maybe a cry for help, maybe a sign Sam knew he was in over his head, Sam knew he needed help, Sam had forgiven him and found himself unable to get out of whatever terrible thing he'd done - he does those things when Dean fails him, when Dean dies on him, when Dean leaves, Sam does these things, Sam can hardly be blamed for spinning off into space when the thing he'd grounded himself to in the Lucifer days couldn't be counted on.

_-these are Lucifer days._

It was all his fault, his fault, not Sam's, and he had to remember that. Because if he went in there guns blazing, he'd lose Sam for good.

"Are you thinking the same thing I am thinking?" Cas said.

"Probably not."

"Oh."

"What if I can't get him back?" Dean said, soft like maybe if Cas didn't hear, didn't answer, they didn't have to talk about it like it was a real possibility.

"You can. He left a trail leading you right to him," Cas said.

Dean frowned in surprise. "Guess I was thinking the same thing you were," he muttered. Then he thought: _He left a trail leading you right to him_ , and he thought _Sammy, what are you doing?_ and he thought, Sam would never, no matter how angry he was, do something like this, not unless the world was at stake, and it wasn't, it wasn't. So.

Sam left a trail right to him. Sam was leading them right to him. Sam was fricking lighting up a neon sign pointing right at him, come get him, get him _please-_

Guns blazing it was, then.

* * *

Dean and Cas came up on the dull white event tent after most of the people had gone in an some kind of organ had started up. A song, and then a man's voice saying "Rise for our King," and the assembled crowd repeated in chorus, "We rise, oh King."

"Thank you," Dean heard, and looked at Cas with wide eyes. That was _Sam_. _What the fuck?_ he mouthed, and Cas shrugged. There was a rustle through the speakers as a microphone changed hands and Sam continued, the pace of formality, of ceremony, a call and response that felt like relief somehow. Sam, low, sedate - forced, maybe? - and then the congregation.

"As was written." _As was written_.

"He who walks the Path." _He who walks the Path_.

"Shall lift us out of Shadow." _Shall lift us out of Shadow_.

"And into Smoke." _And into Smoke._

"What the hell does that mean?" Dean muttered to Cas. Sam's voice shifted into a sort of melodic incantion. The congregation sang along. Dean raised a brow.

Cas frowned. "It's infernal, but again. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Just blood. Purity. Lift." He looked at Dean in some surprise. "Purgatory?"

"All right, enough Hooked on Phonics. Ready?" Cas nodded, and Dean pulled aside the flap and his mouth went dry.

Inside the tent, the fold up chairs were filled with monsters. Big fans blowing the hot air around, some small relief from the muggy heat coming up from the wet ground beneath them. Dean remembered this. Years ago, when Sam had stupidly traded someone else's life for Dean's. At the front, there was a large decorated chair, ribbons woven across it, where Sam sat watching the ground in front of him while the man who'd introduced him gave some kind of sermon. He smiled, this soft smile Dean hadn't seen in years, genuine if quiet joy, and when he looked, Dean saw children on the floor there, picking through a basket of fresh cut flowers, weaving them into a silver circlet. The man at the mic started talking about hope and growth and salvation-

No. No. Sam-

The men at the back were easy kills. Silent blades, laid down gently. But a woman in the back noticed when her husband jerked away from her hand, opened her eyes wide at Dean and clasped her hands over her child's face, shook her head _no no please_ and Dean hesitated. Monsters, they were all monsters, even this woman. Even this child.

And in that space of hesitation, she screamed.

Dean stabbed her through the throat, but the damage had been done. He whirled on a man who came after him. Cas across the way was doing his best to keep up. Screaming came from all sides, women, children, men, monsters all - but Dean could only think in flashes of red and white and black and shine, the slick shine of blood, the slide of his blade through flesh, nevermind that they were monsters, nevermind that they ran and begged, and in the end, he was standing before Cas, his hand tangled in the hair of a little girl who stood petrified, not even crying she was so frightened, and Dean looked at Cas, and then down at the girl, the ribbons in her hands, a crown for Sam's head, her King-

Dean shoved her away and she ran for the tent wall.

Sam stood, he watched Dean like Dean was the monster here, Dean with blood on his hands and face.

"Sam," he started. "Sammy, what-"

"You don't understand," Sam said, stepping backward on the dais.

"So explain it to me," Dean said. He'd been sure he was wrong. He'd convinced himself to trust in Sam. He wasn't wrong, goddammit. He wasn't wrong this time. "Explain it to me, Sammy," he said again. "Please, dammit. I'm listening. I'm here. Whatever's happening, whatever this is, we will figure it out."

Sam just stared at him, like he couldn't believe anything Dean was saying. And that hurt, but okay, fair point. But it was different this time. Dean took a step forward, hand out, but Sam just shook his head and stepped back again, looking off behind Dean-

-At the bloodied bodies, some of which just looked like nice people in their church clothes, murdered as they sat peacefully worshipping - damned fucked up, but from Sam's perspective, his brows up, his breath fast as he took in the devastation and he looked at Dean again, shook his head just so-

Dean stepped forward again, beseeching. "Sam-"

"He was right about you. I can't believe it. He was right." Sam put his hand out to the side, stepped back again away from Dean, this look of terror on his face, and from the wings of the little stage came a young man who watched Dean warily as he reached for Sam's arm, and as soon as they made contact, both of them vanished.


End file.
